^%l^ 


UNIVERSITY  of  CALnUiM-iir. 

AT 

LOS  ANGELES 

LIBRARY 


THE  LIFE  OF  REASON 

OR  THE 

PHASES   OF   HUMAN   PROGRESS 

BY 
GEORGE   SANTAYANA 


INTRODUCTION 

AND 

REASON  IN  COMMON  SENSE 


ij  yap  vov  evtpyeia  ^corj 


NEW  YORK 
•CHARLES   SCRIBNP:R'S   SONS 

192Q 


Copyright,  1905,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published,  February,  1906 


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CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 

THE  SUBJECT  OP  THIS  WORK,  ITS  METHOD  AND  ANTE- 
CEDENTS 

Progress  is  relative  to  an  ideal  which  reflection  creates. 
— Efficacious  reflection  is  reason. — ^The  Life  of  Reason  a 
name  for  all  practical  thought  and  all  action  justified 
by  its  fruits  in  consciousness. — It  is  the  sum  of  Art. — It 
has  a  natural  basis  which  makes  it  definable. — Modern 
philosophy  not  helpful. — Positivism  no  positive  ideal. — 
Christian  philosophy  mythical:  it  misrepresents  facts  and 
conditions. — Liberal  theology  a  superstitious  attitude 
toward  a  natural  world. — The  Greeks  thought  straight 
in  both  physics  and  morals. — Heraclitus  and  the  imme- 
diate.— Democritus  and  the  naturally  intelligible. — 
Socrates  and  the  autonomy  of  mind. — Plato  gave  the 
ideal  its  full  expression. — Aristotle  supplied  its  natural 
basis. — Philosophy  thus  complete,  yet  in  need  of  re- 
statement.— Plato's  myths  in  lieu  of  physics. — Aristotle's 
final  causes. — Modem  science  can  avoid  such  expedi- 
ents.— ^Transcendentalism  true  but  inconsequential. — 
Verbal  ethics. — Spinoza  and  the  Life  of  Reason. — Mod- 
em and  classic  sources  of  inspiration Pages  1-32 


REASON  IN  COMMON   SENSE 
CHAPTER  I 

THE   BIRTH    OF   REASON 

Existence  always  has  an  Order,  called  Chaos  when 
incompatible  with  a  chosen  good. — Absolute  order,  or 
truth,  is  static,  impotent,  indifferent. — In  experience 
order  is  relative  to  interests  which  determine  the  moral 


Vi  CONTENTS 

status  of  all  powers. — The  discovered  conditions  of  reason 
not  its  beginning. — The  flux  first. — Life  the  fixation  of 
interests. — Primary  dualities. — First  gropings. — Instinct 
the  nucleus  of  reason. — Better  and  worse  the  fundamental 
categories Pages   35-47 


CHAPTER  II 

FIRST   STEPS   AND   FIRST   FLUCTUATIONS 

Dreams  before  thoughts. — The  mind  vegetates  uncon- 
trolled save  by  physical  forces. — Internal  order  super- 
venes.— Intrinsic  pleasure  in  existence. — Pleasure  a  good, 
but  not  pursued  or  remembered  unless  it  suffuses  an 
object. — Subhuman  delights. — Animal  living. — Causes  at 
last  discerned. — Attention  guided  by  bodily  impulse. 

Pages  48-63 

CHAPTER  III 

THE    DISCOVERY    OF    NATURAL    OBJECTS 

Nature  man's  home. — Difficulties  in  conceiving  nature. 
— Transcendental  qualms. — Thought  an  aspect  of  life  and 
transitive. — Perception  cumulative  and  synthetic. — Xo 
identical  agent  needed. — Example  of  the  sun. — His  prim- 
itive divinity. — Causes  and  essences  contrasted. — Voracity 
of  intellect. — Can  the  transcendent  be  known? — Can  the 
immediate  be  meant? — Is  thought  a  bridge  from  sensa- 
tion to  sensation? — Mens  naturaliter  platonica. — Identity 
and  independence  predicated  of  things Pages  64-S3 


CHAPTER  IV 

ON  SOME   CRITICS   OF  THIS   DISCOVERT 

Psychology'  as  a  solvent. — Misconceived  role  of  intel- 
ligence.— All  criticism  dogmatic. — A  choice  of  hypoth- 
eses.— Critics  disguised  enthusiasts. — Hume's  gratuitous 
scepticism. — Kant's  substitute  for  knowledge. — False  sub- 
jectivity attributed  to  reason. — Chimerical  reconstruc- 
tion.— The  Critique  a  work  on  mental  architecture.-  - 
Incoherences. — Nature  the  true  system  of  conditions.-- 


CONTENTS  Vii 

Artificial  pathos  in  subjectivism. — Berkeley's  algebra  of 
perception. — Horror  of  physics. — Puerility  in  morals. — 
Truism  and  sophism. — Reality  is  the  practical  made 
intelligible. — Vain  "realities"  and  trustworthy  "fic- 
tions "  Pages  84-117 

CHAPTER  V 

NATURE   UNIFIED   AND   MIND   DISCERNED 

Man's  feeble  grasp  of  nature. — Its  unity  ideal  and 
discoverable  only  by  steady  thought. — Mind  the  erratic 
residue  of  existence. — Ghostly  character  of  mind. — Hypos- 
tasis and  criticism  both  need  control. — Comparative  con- 
stancy in  objects  and  in  ideas. — Spirit  and  sense  defined 
by  their  relation  to  nature. — Vague  notions  of  nature  in- 
volve vague  notions  of  spirit. — Sense  and  spirit  the  life  of 
nature,  which  science  redistributes  but  does  not  deny. 

Pages  118-136 

CHAPTER  VI 

DISCOVERT   OF   FELLOW-MINDS 

Another  background  for  current  experience  may  be 
found  in  alien  minds. — Two  usual  accounts  of  this  con- 
ception criticised:  analogy  between  bodies,  and  dramatic 
dialogue  in  the  soul. — Subject  and  object  empirical,  not 
transcendental,  terms. — Objects  originally  soaked  in  sec- 
ondary and  tertiary  qualities. — Tertiary  qualities  trans- 
posed.— Imputed  mind  consists  of  the  tertiary  qualities 
of  perceived  body — "Pathetic  fallacy"  normal,  yet 
ordinarily  fallacious. — Case  where  it  is  not  a  fallacy. — • 
Knowledge  succeeds  only  by  accident. — Limits  of  insight. 
— Perception  of  character. — Conduct  divined,  conscious- 
ness ignored. — Consciousness  untrustworthy. — Metaphor- 
ical mind. — Summary Pages  137-160 

CHAPTER  VII 

CONCRETIONS   IN   DISCOURSE   AND   IN   EXISTENCE 

So-called  abstract  quaUties  primary. — General  quali- 
ties prior  to  particular  things. — Universals  are  concretions 
in  discourse. — Similar  reactions,  merged  in  one  habit  of 
reproduction,  yield  an  idea. — Ideas  are  ideal. — So-called 


viii  CONTENTS 

abstractions  complete  facts. — Things  concretions  of  con- 
cretions.— Ideas  prior  in  the  order  of  knowledge,  things 
in  the  order  of  nature. — Aristotle's  compromise. — Empiri- 
cal bias  in  favour  of  contiguity. — Artificial  divorce  of  logic 
from  practice. — Their  mutual  involution. — Rationalistic 
suicide. — Complementary  character  of  essence  and  exist- 
ence   Pages  161-183 


CHAPTER  VIII 

^         ON   THE   EEIiATIVE   VALUE   OF  THINGS   AND   IDEAS 

Moral  tone  of  opinions  derived  from  their  logical 
principle. — Concretions  in  discourse  express  instinctive  re- 
actions.— Idealism  rudimentary. — Naturalism  sad. — The 
soul  akin  to  the  eternal  and  ideal.— Her  inexperience. — 
Platonism  spontaneous. — Its  essential  fidelity  to  the 
ideal. — Equal  rights  of  empiricism. — Logic  dependent  on 
fact  for  its  importance,  and  for  its  subsistence. — 
Reason  and  docility. — Applicable  thought  and  clarified 
experience Pages  184-204 


CHAPTER  IX 

HOW  THOUGHT  IS   PRACTICAL 

Functional  relations  of  mind  and  body. — They  form  one 
natural  life. — Artifices  involved  in  separating  them. — Con- 
sciousness expresses  vital  equilibrium  and  docility. — Its 
worthlessness  as  a  cause  and  value  as  an  expression. — - 
Thought's  march  automatic  and  thereby  implicated  in 
events. — Contemplative  essence  of  action. — ^Mechanical 
efficacy  alien  to  thought's  essence. — Consciousness  trans- 
cendental and  transcendent. — It  is  the  seat  of  value. 
— Apparent  utility  of  pain. — Its  real  impotence. — Pre- 
formations involved. — Its  untoward  significance. — Perfect 
function  not  unconscious. — Inchoate  ethics. — Thought 
the  entelechy  of  being. — Its  exuberance. .  .  .  Pages  205-235 

CHAPTER  X 

THE   MEASURE   OF   VALUES   IN   REFLECTION 

•J  Honesty  in  hedonism. — Necessary  qualifications. — ^The 
will  must  judge. — Injustice  inherent  in  representation. — 
^Esthetic  and  speculative  cruelty. — Imputed  values :  their 


CONTENTS  ix 

inconstancy. — Methods  of  control. — Example  of  fame. — 
Disproportionate  interest  in  the  aesthetic. — Irrational 
religious  allegiance. — Pathetic  idealisations. — Inevitable 
impulsiveness  in  prophecy. — ^The  test  a  controlled  present 
ideal  Pages  236-255 

CHAPTER  XI 

SOME   ABSTRACT   CONDITION8    OF   THE   IDEAL 

The  ultimate  end  a  resultant. — Demands  the  substance 
of  ideals. — Discipline  of  the  will. — Demands  made  prac- 
tical and  consistent. — The  ideal  natural. — Need  of  unity 
and  finality. — Ideals  of  nothing. — Darwin  on  moral  sense. 
— Conscience  and  reason  compared. — Reason  imposes  no 
new  sacrifice. — Natural  goods  attainable  and  compatible 
in  principle. — Harmony  the  formal  and  intrinsic  demand 
of  reason Pages  256-268 

CHAPTER  XII 

FLUX   AND   CONSTANCY   IN  HUMAN   NATURE 

Respectable  tradition  that  human  nature  is  fixed. — 
Contrary  currents  of  opinion. — Pantheism. — Instability 
in  existences  does  not  dethrone  their  ideals. — Absolutist 
philosophy  human  and  halting. — All  science  a  deliverance 
of  momentary  thought. — All  criticism  likewise. — Origins 
inessential. — Ideals  functional. — They  are  transferable  to 
similar  beings. — Authority  internal. — Reason  autonomous. 
— Its  distribution. — Natural  selection  of  minds. — Living 
stability. — Continuity  necessary  to  progress. — Limits  of 
variation.  Spirit  a  heritage. — Perfectibility. — Nature  and 
human  nature. — Human  nature  formulated. — Its  concrete 
description  reserved  for  the  sequel Pages  269-291 


INTRODUCTION 

THE   SUBJECT   OF   THIS   WORK,   ITS 
METHOD   AND   ANTECEDENTS 

Progress  is  Whatever  forces  may  govern  human 

relative  to  an    jifg^  jf  they  are  to  be  recognised  b y 

ideal  which  ,  ,     ,  ,i  i  •      i 

reflection         man,  must  betray  themselves  m  human. 
creates.  experience.     Progress  in  science  or  re-*! 

ligion,  no  less  than  in  morals  and  art,  is  a  dra- 
matic episode  in  man's  career,  a  welcome  variation 
in  his  habit  and  state  of  mind ;  although  this  vari- 
ation may  often  regard  or  propitiate  things  exter- 
nal, adjustment  to  which  may  be  important  for 
his  welfare.  The  importance  of  these  external 
things,  as  well  as  their  existence,  he  can  estab- 
lish only  by  the  function  and  utility  which  a  rec- 
ognition of  them  may  have  in  his  life.  The  en- 
tire history  of  progress  is  a  moral  drama,  a  tale 
man  might  unfold  in  a  great  autobiography,  could 
his  myriad  heads  and  countless  scintillas  of  con- 
sciousness conspire,  like  the  seventy  Alexandrian 
sages,  in  a  single  version  of  the  truth  committed 
to  each  for  interpretation.  What  themes  would 
prevail  in  such  an  examination  of  heart?  In 
what  order  and  with  what  emphasis  would  they 
be  recounted?  In  which  of  its  adventures  would 
Vol.  I.— 1  1 


2  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

the  human  race,  reviewing  its  whole  experience, 
acknowledge  a  progress  and  a  gain?  To  answer 
these  questions,  as  they  may  be  answered  specu- 
latively and  provisionally  by  an  individual,  is  the 
purpose  of  the  following  work, 
j.^^   .  A  philosopher  could  hardly  have  a 

reflection  is  higher  ambition  than  to  make  himself 
reason.  ^   mouth-piccc   for   the   memory   and 

judgment  of  his  race.  Yet  the  most  casual  con- 
sideration of  affairs  already  involves  an  attempt 
to  do  the  same  thing.  Keflection  is  pregnant  from 
the  beginning  with  all  the  principles  of  synthesis 
and  valuation  needed  in  the  most  comprehensive 
criticism.  So  soon  as  man  ceases  to  be  wholly 
immersed  in  sense,  he  looks  before  and  after,  he 
regrets  and  desires;  and  the  moments  in  which 
prospect  or  retrospect  takes  place  constitute  the 
reflective  or  representative  part  of  his  life,  in  con- 
trast to  the  unmitigated  flux  of  sensations  in 
which  nothing  ulterior  is  regarded.  Eepresenta- 
tion,  however,  can  hardly  remain  idle  and  merely 
speculative.  To  the  ideal  function  of  envisaging 
the  absent,  memory  and  reflection  will  add  (since 
they  exist  and  constitute  a  new  complication  in 
being)  the  practical  function  of  modifying  the 
future.  Vital  impulse,  however,  when  it  is  modi- 
fied by  reflection  and  veers  in  sympathy  with  judg- 
ments pronounced  on  the  past,  is  properly  called 
reason.  Man's  rational  life  consists  in  those  mo- 
ments in  which  reflection  not  only  occurs  but 
proves  efficacious.     What  is  absent  then  works  in 


INTRODUCTION  3 

the  present,  and  values  are  imputed  where  they 
cannot  be  felt.  Such  representation  is  so  far  from 
being  merely  speculative  that  its  presence  alone 
can  raise  bodily  change  to  the  dignity  of  action. 
Reflection  gathers  experiences  together  and  per- 
ceives their  relative  worth;  which  is  as  much  as 
to  say  that  it  expresses  a  new  attitude  of  will  in 
the  presence  of  a  world  better  understood  and 
turned  to  some  purpose.  The  limits  of  reflection 
mark  those  of  concerted  and  rational  action;  they 
circumscribe  the  field  of  cumulative  experience, 
or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  of  profitable  living. 
_    ^.,    ^  Thus  if  we  use  the  word  life  in  a 

The  Life  of 

Reason  a  eulogistic  scnse  to  designate  the  happy 
name  for  aU     maintenance  against  the  world  of  some 

practical  o 

thought  and  definite  ideal  interest,  we  may  say  with 
aU  action         'Aristotle  that  life  is  reason  in  opera- 

justined  by  _  ^ 

its  fruits  in  tion.  The  Life  of  Reason  will  then 
consciousness.  ^^  ^  ^^^^  f^^,  ^^^^^  ^^^  ^f  experience 

which  perceives  and  pursues  ideals — all  conduct 
so  controlled  and  all  sense  so  interpreted  as  to 
perfect  natural  happiness. 

Without  reason,  as  without  memory,  there  might 
still  be  pleasures  and  pains  in  existence.  To 
increase  those  pleasures  and  reduce  those  pains 
would  be  to  introduce  an  improvement  into  the 
sentient  world,  as  if  a  devil  suddenly  died  in  hell 
or  in  heaven  a  new  angel  were  created.  Since 
the  beings,  however,  in  which  these  values  would 
reside,  would,  by  hypothesis,  know  nothing  of  one 
another,  and  since  the  betterment  would  take  place 


4  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

unprayed-for  and  unnoticed,  it  could  hardly  be 
called  a  progress;  and  certainly  not  a  progress  in 
man,  since  man,  without  the  ideal  continuity  given 
by  memory  and  reason,  would  have  no  moral  being. 
In  human  progress,  therefore,  reason  is  not  a 
casual  instrument,  having  its  sole  value  in  its  ser- 
vice to  sense;  such  a  betterment  in  sentience 
would  not  be  progress  unless  it  were  a  progress  in 
reason,  and  the  increasing  pleasure  revealed  some 
object  that  could  please;  for  without  a  picture  of 
the  situation  from  which  a  heightened  vitality 
might  flow,  the  improvement  could  be  neither  re- 
membered nor  measured  nor  desired.  The  Life 
of  Eeason  is  accordingly  neither  a  mere  means  nor 
a  mere  incident  in  human  progress;  it  is  the  total 
and  embodied  progress  itself,  in  which  the  pleas- 
ures of  sense  are  included  in  so  far  as  they  can 
be  intelligently  enjoyed  and  pursued.  To  recount 
man's  rational  moments  would  be  to  take  an  in- 
ventory of  all  his  goods ;  for  he  is  not  himself  (as 
we  say  with  unconscious  accuracy)  in  the  others. 
If  he  ever  appropriates  them  in  recollection  or 
prophecy,  it  is  only  on  the  ground  of  some  physi- 
cal relation  which  they  may  have  to  his  being. 

Eeason  is  as  old  as  man  and  as  prevalent  as 
human  nature;  for  we  should  not  recognise  an 
animal  to  be  human  unless  his  instincts  were  to 
some  degree  conscious  of  their  ends  and  rendered 
his  ideas  in  that  measure  relevant  to  conduct. 
Many  sensations,  or  even  a  whole  world  of  dreams, 
do  not  amount  to  intelligence  until  the  images  in 


INTRODUCTION  5 

the  mind  begin  to  represent  in  some  way,  how- 
ever symbolic,  the  forces  and  realities  confronted 
in  action.  There  may  well  be  intense  conscious- 
ness in  the  total  absence  of  rationality.  Such 
consciousness  is  suggested  in  dreams,  in  madness, 
and  may  be  found,  for  all  we  know,  in  the  depths 
of  universal  nature.  Minds  peopled  only  by 
desultory  visions  and  lusts  would  not  have  the  dig- 
nity of  human  souls  even  if  they  seemed  to  pur- 
sue certain  objects  unerringly;  for  that  pursuit 
would  not  be  illumined  by  any  vision  of  its  goal. 
Keason  and  humanity  begin  with  the  union  of 
instinct  and  ideation,  when  instinct  becomes  en- 
lightened, establishes  values  in  its  objects,  and  is 
turned  from  a  process  into  an  art,  while  at  the 
same  time  consciousness  becomes  practical  and 
cognitive,  beginning  to  contain  some  symbol  or 
record  of  the  co-ordinate  realities  among  which  it 
arises. 

Reason  accordingly  requires  the  fusion  of  two 
types  of  life,  commonly  led  in  the  world  in  well- 
nigh  total  separation,  one  a  life  of  impulse  ex- 
pressed in  affairs  and  social  passions,  the  other  a 
life  of  reflection  expressed  in  religion,  science,  and 
the  imitative  arts.  In  the  Life  of  Reason,  if  it 
were  brought  to  perfection,  intelligence  would  be 
at  once  the  universal  method  of  practice  and  its 
continual  reward.  All  reflection  would  then  be 
applicable  in  action  and  all  action  fruitful  in  hap- 
piness. Though  this  be  an  ideal,  yet  everyone 
gives  it  from  time  to  time  a  partial  embodiment 


6  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

when  he  practises  useful  arts,  when  his  passions 
happily  lead  him  to  enlightenment,  or  when  his 
fancy  breeds  visions  pertinent  to  his  ultimate 
good.  Everyone  leads  the  Life  of  Keuson  in  so 
far  as  he  finds  a  steady  light  behind  the  world's 
glitter  and  a  clear  residuum  of  joy  beneath  pleas- 
ure or  success.  No  experience  not  to  be  repented 
of  falls  without  its  sphere.  Every  solution  to  a 
doubt,  in  so  far  as  it  is  not  a  new  error,  every 
practical  achievement  not  neutralised  by  a  second 
maladjustment  consequent  upon  it,  every  consola- 
tion not  the  seed  of  another  greater  sorrow,  may 
be  gathered  together  and  built  into  this  edifice. 
The  Life  of  Eeason  is  the  happy  marriage  of  two 
elements — impulse  and  ideation — which  if  wholly 
divorced  would  reduce  man  to  a  brute  or  to  a 
maniac.  The  rational  animal  is  generated  by  the 
union  of  these  two  monsters.  He  is  constituted 
by  ideas  which  have  ceased  to  be  visionary  and 
actions  which  have  ceased  to  be  vain. 

Thus  the  Life  of  Reason  is  another 
It  IS  the  sum     jj^nie  for  what,  in  the  widest  sense  of 

of  Art  ^ 

the  word,  might  be  called  Art.  Opera- 
tions become  arts  when  their  purpose  is  conscious 
and  their  method  teachable.  In  perfect  art  the 
whole  idea  is  creative  and  exists  only  to  be  em- 
bodied, while  every  part  of  the  product  is  rational 
and  gives  delightful  expression  to  that  idea.  Like 
art,  again,  the  Life  of  Reason  is  not  a  power  but 
a  result,  the  spontaneous  expression  of  liberal 
genius  in  a  favouring  environment.    Both  art  and 


INTRODUCTION  7 

reason  have  natural  sources  and  meet  with  natural 
checks;  but  when  a  process  is  turned  successfully 
into  an  art,  so  that  its  issues  have  value  and  the 
ideas  that  accompany  it  become  practical  and 
cognitive,  reflection,  finding  little  that  it  cannot 
in  some  way  justify  and  understand,  begins  to 
boast  that  it  directs  and  has  created  the  world  in 
which  it  finds  itself  so  much  at  home.  Thus  if 
art  could  extend  its  sphere  to  include  every 
activity  in  nature,  reason,  being  everywhere  exem- 
plified, might  easily  think  itself  omnipotent. 
This  ideal,  far  as  it  is  from  actual  realisation,  has 
so  dazzled  men,  that  in  their  religion  and  mythical 
philosophy  they  have  often  spoken  as  if  it  were 
already  actual  and  efficient.  This  anticipation 
amounts,  when  taken  seriously,  to  a  confusion  of 
purposes  with  facts  and  of  functions  with  causes, 
a  confusion  which  in  the  interests  of  wisdom  and 
progress  it  is  important  to  avoid ;  but  these  specu- 
lative fables,  when  we  take  them  for  what  they 
are — poetic  expressions  of  the  ideal — help  us  to 
see  how  deeply  rooted  this  ideal  is  in  man's  mind, 
and  afford  us  a  standard  by  which  to  measure  his 
approaches  to  the  rational  perfection  of  which  he 
dreams.  For  the  Life  of  Eeason,  being  the  sphere 
of  all  human  art,  is  man's  imitation  of  divinity. 

To  study  such  an  ideal,  dimly  ex- 
urai  basis        pressed  though  it  be  in  human  exist- 
which  makes    euce,  is  no  prophetic  or  visionary  un- 
dertaking.    Every  genuine  ideal  has  a 
natural  basis;  anyone  may  understand  and  safely 


8  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

interpret  it  who  is  attentive  to  the  life  from  which 
it  springs.  To  decipher  the  Life  of  Reason  nothing 
is  needed  but  an  analytic  spirit  and  a  judicious 
love  of  man,  a  love  quick  to  distinguish  success 
from  failure  in  his  great  and  confused  experiment 
of  living.  The  historian  of  reason  should  not  be 
a  romantic  poet,  vibrating  impotently  to  every  im- 
pulse he  finds  afoot,  without  a  criterion  of  excel- 
lence or  a  vision  of  perfection.  Ideals  are  free, 
but  they  are  neither  more  numerous  nor  more 
variable  than  the  living  natures  that  generate 
them.  Ideals  are  legitimate,  and  each  initially 
envisages  a  genuine  and  innocent  good;  but  they 
are  not  realisable  together,  nor  even  singly  when 
they  have  no  deep  roots  in  the  world.  Neither  is 
the  philosopher  compelled  by  his  somewhat  judi- 
cial office  to  be  a  satirist  or  censor,  without  sym- 
pathy for  those  tentative  and  ingenuous  passions 
out  of  which,  after  all,  his  own  standards  must 
arise.  He  is  the  chronicler  of  human  progress, 
and  to  measure  that  progress  he  should  be  equally 
attentive  to  the  impulses  that  give  it  direction  and 
to  the  circumstances  amid  which  it  stumbles 
toward  its  natural  goal. 
„  ,       ^.  There  is  unfortunately  no  school  of 

Modern  phi-  '^  . 

losophy  not  modern  philosophy  to  which  a  critique 
helpful.  Q^   human   progress    can   well   be   at- 

tached. Almost  every  school,  indeed,  can  furnish 
something  useful  to  the  critic,  sometimes  a 
physical  theory,  sometimes  a  piece  of  logical 
analysis.     We   shall   need   to  borrow   from   cur- 


INTKODUCTION  9 

rent  science  and  speculation  the  picture  they 
draw  of  man's  conditions  and  environment,  his 
history  and  mental  habits.  These  may  furnish  a 
theatre  and  properties  for  our  drama;  but  they 
offer  no  hint  of  its  plot  and  meaning.  A  great 
imaginative  apathy  has  fallen  on  the  mind.  One- 
half  the  learned  world  is  amused  in  tinkering 
obsolete  armour,  as  Don  Quixote  did  his  helmet; 
deputing  it,  after  a  series  of  catastrophes,  to  be 
at  last  sound  and  invulnerable.  The  other  half, 
the  naturalists  who  have  studied  psychology  and 
evolution,  look  at  life  from  the  outside,  and  the 
processes  of  Nature  make  them  forget  her  uses. 
„  . .  .  Bacon  indeed  had  prized  science  for 

Positivism  ^ 

no  positive  adding  to  the  comforts  of  life,  a  func- 
ideai.  ^^^^  g^jjj  commcmoratcd  by  positivists 

in  their  eloquent  moments.  Habitually,  however, 
when  they  utter  the  word  progress  it  is,  in  their 
mouths,  a  synonym  for  inevitable  change,  or  at 
best  for  change  in  that  direction  which  they  con- 
ceive to  be  on  the  whole  predominant.  If  they 
combine  with  physical  speculation  some  elements 
of  morals,  these  are  usually  purely  formal,  to  the 
effect  that  happiness  is  to  be  pursued  (probably, 
alas !  because  to  do  so  is  a  psychological  law) ;  but 
what  happiness  consists  in  we  gather  only  from 
casual  observations  or  by  putting  together  their 
national  prejudices  and  party  saws. 

The  truth  is  that  even  this  radical  school,  eman- 
cipated as  it  thinks  itself,  is  suffering  from  the 
after-effects   of   supernaturalism.     Like   children 


10  THE   LIFE   OP   REASON 

escaped  from  school,  they  find  their  whole  happi- 
ness in  freedom.  They  are  proud  of  what  they 
have  rejected,  as  if  a  great  wit  were  required  to 
do  so;  but  they  do  not  know  what  they  want.  If 
you  astonish  them  by  demanding  what  is  their 
positive  ideal,  further  than  that  there  should  be 
a  great  many  people  and  that  they  should  be  all 
alike,  they  will  say  at  first  that  what  ought  to  be 
is  obvious,  and  later  they  will  submit  the  matter 
to  a  majority  vote.  They  have  discarded  the 
machinery  in  which  their  ancestors  embodied  the 
ideal;  they  have  not  perceived  that  those  symbols 
stood  for  the  Life  of  Eeason  and  gave  fantastic 
and  embarrassed  expression  to  what,  in  itself,  is 
pure  humanity;  and  they  have  thus  remained  en- 
tangled in  the  colossal  error  that  ideals  are  some- 
thing adventitious  and  unmeaning,  not  having  a 
soil  in  mortal  life  nor  a  possible  fulfilment  there. 
The  profound  and  pathetic  ideas 
Christian  which  inspired  Christianity  were  at- 
mythicahit  tachcd  in  the  beginning  to  ancient 
misrepresents  myths  and  soon  crystalliscd  into  many 

facts  and  con-  __,  ...      , 

ditions.  i^GW  oncs.     The  mythical  manner  per- 

vades Christian  philosophy;  but  myth 
succeeds  in  expressing  ideal  life  only  by  misrep- 
resenting its  history  and  conditions.  This 
method  was  indeed  not  original  with  the  Fathers; 
they  borrowed  it  from  Plato,  who  appealed  to 
parables  himself  in  an  open  and  harmless  fashion, 
yet  with  disastrous  consequences  to  his  school. 
Nor  was  he  the  first;  for  the  instinct  to  regard 


INTKODUCTION  11 

poetic  fictions  as  revelations  of  supernatural  facts 
is  as  old  as  the  soul's  primitive  incapacity  to  dis- 
tinguish dreams  from  waking  perceptions,  sign 
from  thing  signified,  and  inner  emotions  from 
external  powers.  Such  confusions,  though  in  a 
way  they  obey  moral  forces,  make  a  rational  esti- 
mate of  things  impossible.  To  misrepresent  the 
conditions  and  consequences  of  action  is  no  merely 
speculative  error;  it  involves  a  false  emphasis  in 
character  and  an  artificial  balance  and  co-ordina- 
tion among  human  pursuits.  When  ideals  are 
hypostasised  into  powers  alleged  to  provide  for 
their  own  expression,  the  Life  of  Eeason  cannot  be 
conceived;  in  theory  its  field  of  operation  is  pre- 
empted and  its  function  gone,  while  in  practice  its 
inner  impulses  are  turned  awry  by  artificial  stimu- 
lation and  repression. 

The  Patristic  systems,  though  weak  in  their 
foundations,  were  extraordinarily  wise  and  com- 
prehensive in  their  working  out;  and  while  they 
inverted  life  they  preserved  it.  Dogma  added  to 
the  universe  fabulous  perspectives;  it  interpolated 
also  innumerable  incidents  and  powers  which  gave 
a  new  dimension  to  experience.  Yet  the  old  world 
remained  standing  in  its  strange  setting,  like  the 
Pantheon  in  modern  Kome ;  and,  what  is  more  im- 
portant, the  natural  springs  of  human  action  were 
still  acknowledged,  and  if  a  supernatural  disci- 
pline was  imposed,  it  was  only  because  experience 
and  faith  had  disclosed  a  situation  in  which  the 
pursuit   of    earthly    happiness    seemed    hopeless. 


12  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

Nature  was  not  destroyed  by  its  novel  appendages, 
nor  did  reason  die  in  the  cloister:  it  hibernated 
there,  and  could  come  back  to  its  own  in  due  sea- 
son, only  a  little  dazed  and  weakened  by  its  long 
confinement.  Such,  at  least,  is  the  situation  in 
Catholic  regions,  where  the  Patristic  philosophy 
has  not  appreciably  varied.  Among  Protestants 
Christian  dogma  has  taken  a  new  and  ambiguous 
direction,  which  has  at  once  minimised  its  disturb- 
ing effect  in  practice  and  isolated  its  primary  illu- 
sion. The  symptoms  have  been  cured  and  the 
disease  driven  in. 

The  tenets  of  Protestant  bodies  are 
Liberal  the-  notoriously  Varied  and  on  principle 
perstitious  subject  to  change.  There  is  hardly  a 
attitude  combination  of  tradition  and  spontane- 

natural  world,  i^y  which  has  not  been  tried  in  some 
quarter.  If  we  think,  however,  of 
broad  tendencies  and  ultimate  issues,  it  appears 
that  in  Protestantism  myth,  without  disappear- 
ing, has  changed  its  relation  to  reality :  instead  of 
being  an  extension  to  the  natural  world  myth  has 
become  its  substratum.  Religion  no  longer  re- 
veals divine  personalities,  future  rewards,  and  ten- 
derer Elysian  consolations;  nor  does  it  seriously 
propose  a  heaven  to  be  reached  by  a  ladder  nor  a 
purgatory  to  be  shortened  by  prescribed  devotions. 
It  merely  gives  the  real  world  an  ideal  status  and 
teaches  men  to  accept  a  natural  life  on  super- 
natural grounds.  The  consequence  is  that  the 
most  pious  can  give  an  unvarnished  description  of 


INTRODUCTION  13 

things.  Even  immortality  and  the  idea  of  God 
are  submitted,  in  liberal  circles,  to  scientific  treat- 
ment. On  the  other  hand,  it  would  be  hard  to 
conceive  a  more  inveterate  obsession  than  that 
which  keeps  the  attitude  of  these  same  minds  in- 
appropriate to  the  objects  they  envisage.  They 
have  accepted  natural  conditions;  they  will  not 
accept  natural  ideals.  The  Life  of  Reason  has  no 
existence  for  them,  because,  although  its  field  is 
clear,  they  will  not  tolerate  any  human  or  finite 
standard  of  value,  and  will  not  suffer  extant  in- 
terests, which  can  alone  guide  them  in  action  or 
judgment,  to  define  the  worth  of  life. 

The  after-effects  of  Hebraism  are  here  contrary 
to  its  foundations;  for  the  Jews  loved  the  world 
so  much  that  they  brought  themselves,  in  order 
to  win  and  enjoy  it,  to  an  intense  concentration  of 
purpose;  but  this  effort  and  discipline,  which  had 
of  course  been  mythically  sanctioned,  not  only 
failed  of  its  object,  but  grew  far  too  absolute  and 
sublime  to  think  its  object  could  ever  have  been 
earthly;  and  the  supernatural  machir'^ry  which 
was  to  have  secured  prosperity,  while  that  still 
enticed,  now  had  to  furnish  some  worthier  object 
for  the  passion  it  had  artificially  fostered.  Fanat- 
icism consists  in  redoubling  your  effort  when  you 
have  forgotten  your  aim. 

An  earnestness  which  is  out  of  proportion  to 
any  knowledge  or  love  of  real  things,  which  is 
therefore  dark  and  inward  and  thinks  itself  deeper 
than  the   earth's   foundations — such   an  earnest- 


14  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

ness,  until  culture  turns  it  into  intelligent  inter- 
ests, will  naturally  breed  a  new  mythology.  It 
will  try  to  place  some  world  of  Afrites  and  shad- 
owy giants  behind  the  constellations,  which  it  finds 
too  distinct  and  constant  to  be  its  companions  or 
supporters;  and  it  will  assign  to  itself  vague  and 
infinite  tasks,  for  which  it  is  doubtless  better 
equipped  than  for  those  which  the  earth  now  sets 
before  it.  Even  these,  however,  since  they  are 
parts  of  an  infinite  whole,  the  mystic  may  (his- 
trionically, perhaps,  yet  zealously)  undertake;  but 
as  his  eye  will  be  perpetually  fixed  on  something 
invisible  beyond,  and  nothing  will  be  done  for  its 
own  sake  or  enjoyed  in  its  own  fugitive  presence, 
there  will  be  little  art  and  little  joy  in  existence. 
All  will  be  a  tossing  servitude  and  illiberal  mist, 
where  the  parts  will  have  no  final  values  and  the 
whole  no  pertinent  direction. 
The  Greeks  ^^  Greek  philosophy  the  situation  is 

thought  far  more  auspicious.  The  ancients  led  a 

both^physks  rational  life  and  envisaged  the  various 
and  morals,  spheres  of  Speculation  as  men  might 
whose  central  interests  were  rational.  In  physics 
they  leaped  at  once  to  the  conception  of  a  dynamic 
unity  and  general  evolution,  thus  giving  that 
background  to  human  life  which  shrewd  observa- 
tion would  always  have  descried,  and  which  mod- 
ern science  has  laboriously  rediscovered.  Two 
great  systems  offered,  in  two  legitimate  directions, 
what  are  doubtless  the  final  and  radical  accounts 
of  physical  being.     Heraclitus,  describing  the  im- 


INTRODUCTION  15 

mediate,  found  it  to  be  in  constant  and  pervasive 
change:  no  substances,  no  forms,  no  identities 
„      ,.  could  be  arrested  there,  but  as  in  the 

Heraclitus 

and  the  im-  human  soul,  SO  in  nature,  all  was  in- 
mediate,  stability,  contradiction,  reconstruction, 
and  oblivion.  This  remains  the  empirical  fact;  and 
we  need  but  to  rescind  the  artificial  division  which 
Descartes  has  taught  us  to  make  between  nature 
and  life,  to  feel  again  the  absolute  aptness  of 
Heraclitus's  expressions.  These  were  thought 
obscure  only  because  they  were  so  disconcertingly 
penetrating  and  direct.  The  immediate  is  what 
nobody  sees,  because  convention  and  reflection  turn 
existence,  as  soon  as  they  can,  into  ideas;  a  man 
who  discloses  the  immediate  seems  profound,  yet 
his  depth  is  nothing  but  innocence  recovered  and 
a  sort  of  intellectual  abstention.  Mysticism, 
scepticism,  and  transcendentalism  have  all  in  their 
various  ways  tried  to  fall  back  on  the  immediate; 
but  none  of  them  has  been  ingenuous  enough. 
Each  has  added  some  myth,  or  sophistry,  or  de- 
lusive artifice  to  its  direct  observation.  Heracli- 
tus remains  the  honest  prophet  of  immediacy:  a 
mystic  without  raptures  or  bad  rhetoric,  a  scep- 
tic who  does  not  rely  for  his  results  on  conven- 
tions unwittingly  adopted,  a  transcendentalist 
without  false  pretensions  or  incongruous  dogmas. 
The  immediate  is  not,  however,  a  good  subject 
for  discourse,  and  the  expounders  of  Heraclitus 
were  not  unnaturally  blamed  for  monotony.  AH 
they  could  do  was  to  iterate  their  master's  maxim, 


16  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

and  declare  everything  to  be  in  flux.  In  suggest- 
ing laws  of  recurrence  and  a  reason  in  which  what 
is  common  to  many  might  be  expressed,  Heraclitus 
had  opened  the  door  into  another  region :  had  he 
passed  through,  his  philosophy  would  have  been 
greatly  modified,  for  permanent  forms  would  have 
forced  themselves  on  his  attention  no  less  than 
shifting  materials.  Such  a  Heraclitus  would  have 
anticipated  Plato;  but  the  time  for  such  a  syn- 
thesis had  not  yet  arrived. 

Democritus  At  the   opposite  pole   from   imme- 

nafufauy  ^^^^^  ^^^^  intelligibility.  To  reduce 
intelligible.  phenomena  to  constant  elements,  as 
similar  and  simple  as  possible,  and  to  conceive 
their  union  and  separation  to  obey  constant  laws, 
is  what  a  natural  philosopher  will  inevitably  do 
so  soon  as  his  interest  is  not  merely  to  utter 
experience  but  to  understand  it.  Democritus 
brought  this  scientific  ideal  to  its  ultimate  expres- 
sion. By  including  psychic  existence  in  his 
atomic  system,  he  indicated  a  problem  which 
natural  science  has  since  practically  abandoned 
but  which  it  may  some  day  be  compelled  to  take 
up.  The  atoms  of  Democritus  seem  to  us  gross, 
even  for  chemistry,  and  their  quality  would  have 
to  undergo  great  transformation  if  they  were  to 
support  intelligibly  psychic  being  as  well ;  but  that 
very  grossness  and  false  simplicity  had  its  merits, 
and  science  must  be  for  ever  grateful  to  the  man 
who  at  its  inception  could  so  clearly  formulate  its 
mechanical  ideal.     That  the  world  is  not  so  in- 


INTRODUCTION  17 

telligible  as  we  could  wish  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at.  In  other  respects  also  it  fails  to  respond  to 
our  ideals;  yet  our  hope  must  be  to  find  it  more 
propitious  to  the  intellect  as  well  as  to  all  the  arts 
in  proportion  as  we  learn  better  how  to  live  in  it. 

The  atoms  of  what  we  call  hydrogen  or  oxygen 
may  well  turn  out  to  be  worlds,  as  the  stars  are 
which  make  atoms  for  astronomy.  Their  inner  or- 
ganisation might  be  negligible  on  our  rude  plane 
of  being;  did  it  disclose  itself,  however,  it  would 
be  intelligible  in  its  turn  only  if  constant  parts 
and  constant  laws  were  discernible  within  each 
system.  So  that  while  atomism  at  a  given  level 
may  not  be  a  final  or  metaphysical  truth,  it  will 
describe,  on  every  level,  the  practical  and  effica- 
cious structure  of  the  world.  We  owe  to  Democ- 
ritus  this  ideal  of  practical  intelligibility;  and  he 
is  accordingly  an  eternal  spokesman  of  reason. 
His  system,  long  buried  with  other  glories  of  the 
world,  has  been  partly  revived;  and  although  it 
cannot  be  verified  in  haste,  for  it  represents  an 
ultimate  ideal,  every  advance  in  science  recon- 
stitutes it  in  some  particular.  Mechanism  is  not 
one  principle  of  explanation  among  others.  In 
natural  philosophy,  where  to  explain  means  to 
discover  origins,  transmutations,  and  laws,  mech- 
anism is  explanation  itself. 

Heraclitus  had  the  good  fortune  of  having  his 
physics  absorbed  by  Plato.  It  is  a  pity  that  De- 
mocritus'  physics  was  not  absorbed  by  Aristotle. 
For  with  the  flux  observed,  and  mechanism  con- 

VoL.  I.— 2 


18  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

ceived  to  explain  it,  the  theory  of  existence  is  com- 
plete; and  had  a  complete  physical  theory  been 
incorporated  into  the  Socratic  philosophy,  wisdom 
would  have  lacked  none  of  its  parts.  Democri- 
tus,  however,  appeared  too  late,  when  ideal  sci- 
ence had  overrun  the  whole  field  and  initiated  a 
verbal  and  dialectical  physics ;  so  that  Aristotle,  for 
all  his  scientific  temper  and  studies,  built  his 
natural  philosophy  on  a  lamentable  misunder- 
standing, and  condemned  thought  to  confusion 
for  two  thousand  years. 
„      ,       .        If  the  happy  freedom  of  the  Greeks 

Socrates  and  ^^*' 

the  autonomy  from  Tcligious  dogma  made  them  the 
of  nund.  £j.g^  natural  philosophers,  their  happy 
political  freedom  made  them  the  first  moralists. 
It  was  no  accident  that  Socrates  walked  the  Athe- 
nian agora;  it  was  no  petty  patriotism  that  made 
him  shrink  from  any  other  scene.  His  science  had 
its  roots  there,  in  the  personal  independence,  in- 
tellectual vivacity,  and  clever  dialectic  of  his 
countrymen.  Ideal  science  lives  in  discourse;  it 
consists  in  the  active  exercise  of  reason,  in  sig- 
nification, appreciation,  intent,  and  self-expres- 
sion. Its  sum  total  is  to  know  oneself,  not  as 
psychology  or  anthropology  might  describe  a  man, 
but  to  know,  as  the  saying  is,  one's  own  mind. 
Nor  is  he  who  knows  his  own  mind  forbidden  to 
change  it;  the  dialectician  has  nothing  to  do  with 
future  possibilities  or  with  the  opinion  of  anyone 
but  the  man  addressed.  This  kind  of  truth  is 
but  adequate  veracity;  its  only  object  is  its  own 


INTRODUCTION  19 

intent.  Having  developed  in  the  spirit  the  con- 
sciousness of  its  meanings  and  purposes,  Socrates 
rescued  logic  and  ethics  for  ever  from  authority. 
With  his  friends  the  Sophists,  he  made  man  the 
measure  of  all  things,  after  bidding  him  measure 
himself,  as  they  neglected  to  do,  by  his  own  ideal. 
That  brave  humanity  which  had  first  raised  its 
head  in  Hellas  and  had  endowed  so  many  things 
in  heaven  and  earth,  where  everything  was 
hitherto  monstrous,  with  proportion  and  use,  so 
that  man's  works  might  justify  themselves  to  his 
mind,  now  found  in  Socrates  its  precise  defini- 
tion; and  it  was  naturally  where  the  Life  of  Eea- 
son  had  been  long  cultivated  that  it  came  finally 
to  be  conceived. 

Plato   ave  Socratcs   had,  however,  a   plebeian 

the  ideal  its  strain  in  his  humanity,  and  his  utili- 
fuii  expression.  ^j.-g^j^-gj^^  at  least  in  its  expression, 

hardly  did  justice  to  what  gives  utility  to  life. 
His  condemnation  for  atheism — if  we  choose  to 
take  it  symbolically — was  not  altogether  unjust: 
the  gods  of  Greece  were  not  honoured  explicitly 
enough  in  his  philosophy.  Human  good  appeared 
there  in  its  principle ;  you  would  not  set  a  pilot  to 
mend  shoes,  because  you  knew  your  own  purpose; 
but  what  purposes  a  civilised  soul  might  harbour, 
and  in  what  highest  shapes  the  good  might  appear, 
was  a  problem  that  seems  not  to  have  attracted 
his  genius.  It  was  reserved  to  Plato  to  bring  the 
Socratic  ethics  to  its  sublimest  expression  and  to 
elicit  from  the  depths  of  the  Greek  conscience 


20  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

those  ancestral  ideals  which  had  inspired  its  leg- 
islators and  been  embodied  in  its  sacred  civic  tra- 
ditions. The  owl  of  Minerva  flew,  as  Hegel  says, 
in  the  dusk  of  evening;  and  it  was  horror  at  the 
abandonment  of  all  creative  virtues  that  brought 
Plato  to  conceive  them  so  sharply  and  to  preach 
them  in  so  sad  a  tone.  It  was  after  all  but  the 
love  of  beauty  that  made  him  censure  the  poets; 
for  like  a  true  Greek  and  a  true  lover  he  wished 
to  see  beauty  flourish  in  the  real  world.  It  was 
love  of  freedom  that  made  him  harsh  to  his  ideal 
citizens,  that  they  might  be  strong  enough  to 
preserve  the  liberal  life.  And  when  he  broke 
away  from  political  preoccupations  and  turned  to 
the  inner  life,  his  interpretations  proved  the  abso- 
lute sufficiency  of  the  Socratic  method;  and  he 
left  nothing  pertinent  unsaid  on  ideal  love  and 
ideal  immortality. 

Beyond  this  point  no  rendering  of  the 
suppUedits  ^^^^  ^^  Eeasou  has  ever  been  carried, 
natural  Aristotlc  improved  the  detail,  and  gave 

breadth  and  precision  to  many  a  part. 
If  Plato  possessed  greater  imaginative  splendour 
and  more  enthusiasm  in  austerity,  Aristotle  had 
perfect  sobriety  and  adequacy,  with  greater  fidel- 
ity to  the  common  sentiments  of  his  race.  Plato, 
by  virtue  of  his  scope  and  plasticity,  together 
with  a  certain  prophetic  zeal,  outran  at  times  the 
limits  of  the  Hellenic  and  the  rational;  he  saw 
human  virtue  so  surrounded  and  oppressed  by 
physical  dangers  that  he  wished  to  give  it  mythi- 


INTRODUCTION  21 

cal  sanctions,  and  his  fondness  for  transmigra- 
tion and  nether  punishments  was  somewhat  more 
than  playful.  If  as  a  work  of  imagination  his 
philosophy  holds  the  first  place,  Aristotle's  has  the 
decisive  advantage  of  being  the  unalloyed  expres- 
sion of  reason.  In  Aristotle  the  conception  of 
human  nature  is  perfectly  sound ;  everything  ideal 
has  a  natural  basis  and  everything  natural  an 
ideal  development.  His  ethics,  when  thoroughly 
digested  and  weighed,  especially  when  the  meagre 
outlines  are  filled  in  with  Plato's  more  discursive 
expositions,  will  seem  therefore  entirely  final. 
The  Life  of  Reason  finds  there  its  classic  expli- 
cation. 

Philosophy  -^s  it  is  improbable  that  there  will 

thus  complete,  goon  be  another  people  so  free  from 

yet  in  need  .  -^j.   j  j  j; 

of  resute-  prcoccupatious,  SO  gittcd,  and  so  fer- 
ment, tunate  as  the  Greeks,  or  capable  in 
consequence  of  so  well  exemplifying  humanity,  so 
also  it  is  improbable  that  a  philosopher  will  soon 
arise  with  Aristotle's  scope,  judgment,  or  author- 
ity, one  knowing  so  well  how  to  be  both  reason- 
able and  exalted.  It  might  seem  vain,  therefore, 
to  try  to  do  afresh  what  has  been  done  before  with 
unapproachable  success;  and  instead  of  writing 
inferior  things  at  great  length  about  the  Life  of 
Reason,  it  might  be  simpler  to  read  and  to  propa- 
gate what  Aristotle  wrote  with  such  immortal  just- 
ness and  masterly  brevity.  But  times  change; 
and  though  the  principles  of  reason  remain  the 
same  the  facts  of  human  Life  and  of  human  con- 


22  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

science  alter.  A  new  background,  a  new  basis  of 
application,  appears  for  logic,  and  it  may  be  use- 
ful to  restate  old  truths  in  new  words,  the  better 
to  prove  their  eternal  validity.  Aristotle  is,  in  his 
morals,  Greek,  concise,  and  elementary.  As  a 
Greek,  he  mixes  with  the  ideal  argument  illustra- 
tions, appreciations,  and  conceptions  which  are  not 
inseparable  from  its  essence.  In  themselves,  no 
doubt,  these  accessories  are  better  than  what  in 
modern  times  would  be  substituted  for  them,  being 
less  sophisticated  and  of  a  nobler  stamp;  but  to 
our  eyes  they  disguise  what  is  profound  and  uni- 
versal in  natural  morality  by  embodying  it  in 
images  which  do  not  belong  to  our  life.  Our 
direst  struggles  and  the  last  sanctions  of  our 
morality  do  not  appear  in  them.  The  pagan 
world,  because  its  maturity  was  simpler  than  our 
crudeness,  seems  childish  to  us.  We  do  not  find 
there  our  sins  and  holiness,  our  love,  charity,  and 
honour. 

The  Greek  too  would  not  find  in  our  world  the 
things  he  valued  most,  things  to  which  he  sur- 
rendered himself,  perhaps,  with  a  more  constant 
self-sacrifice — piety,  country,  friendship,  and  beau- 
ty ;  and  he  might  add  that  his  ideals  were  rational 
and  he  could  attain  them,  while  ours  are  extrava- 
gant and  have  been  missed.  Yet  even  if  we  ac- 
knowledged his  greater  good  fortune,  it  would  be 
impossible  for  us  to  go  back  and  become  like  him. 
To  make  the  attempt  would  show  no  sense  of  real- 
ity and  little  sense  of  humour.    We  must  dress  in 


INTRODUCTION  23 

our  own  clothes,  if  we  do  not  wish  to  substitute  a 
masquerade  for  practical  existence.  What  we  can 
adopt  from  Greek  morals  is  only  the  abstract  prin- 
ciple of  their  development ;  their  foundation  in  all 
the  extant  forces  of  human  nature  and  their  effort 
toward  establishing  a  perfect  harmony  among 
them.  These  forces  themselves  have  perceptibly 
changed,  at  least  in  their  relative  power.  Thus 
we  are  more  conscious  of  wounds  to  stanch  and 
wrongs  to  fight  against,  and  less  of  goods  to  at- 
tain. The  movement  of  conscience  has  veered; 
the  centre  of  gravity  lies  in  another  part  of  the 
character. 

Another  circumstance  that  invites  a  restate- 
ment of  rational  ethics  is  the  impressive  illustra- 
tion of  their  principle  which  subsequent  history 
has  afforded.  Mankind  has  been  making  extraor- 
dinary experiments  of  which  Aristotle  could  not 
dream;  and  their  result  is  calculated  to  clarify 
even  his  philosophy.  For  in  some  respects  it 
needed  experiments  and  clarification.  He  had 
been  led  into  a  systematic  fusion  of  dialectic  with 
physics,  and  of  this  fusion  all  pretentious  modern 
philosophy  is  the  aggravated  extension.  Socrates' 
pupils  could  not  abandon  his  ideal  principles,  yet 
they  could  not  bear  to  abstain  from  physics 
altogether ;  they  therefore  made  a  mock  physics  in 
moral  terms,  out  of  which  theology  was  after- 
ward developed.  Plato,  standing  nearer  to 
Socrates  and  being  no  naturalist  by  disposition, 
never  carried  the  fatal  experiment   beyond  the 


24  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

m3^tliical  stage.  He  accordingly  remained  the 
purer  moralist,  much  as  Aristotle's  judgment  may 
be  preferred  in  many  particulars.  Their  relative 
position  may  be  roughly  indicated  by  saying  that 
Plato  had  no  physics  and  that  Aristotle's  physics 
was  false;  so  that  ideal  science  in  the  one  suf- 
fered from  want  of  environment  and  control,  while 
in  the  other  it  suffered  from  misuse  in  a  sphere 
where  it  had  no  application. 

What  had  happened  was  briefly  this : 
myths  in  lieu  Plato,  having  studied  many  sorts  of 
of  physics.  philosophy  and  being  a  bold  and  uni- 
versal genius,  was  not  satisfied  to  leave  all  physi- 
cal questions  pending,  as  his  master  had  done. 
He  adopted,  accordingly,  Heraclitus's  doctrine  of 
the  immediate,  which  he  now  called  the  realm  of 
phenomena ;  for  what  exists  at  any  instant,  if  you 
arrest  and  name  it,  turns  out  to  have  been  an 
embodiment  of  some  logical  essence,  such  as  dis- 
course might  define;  in  every  fact  some  idea 
makes  its  appearance,  and  such  an  apparition  of 
the  ideal  is  a  phenomenon.  Moreover,  another 
philosophy  had  made  a  deep  impression  on  Plato's 
mind  and  had  helped  to  develop  Socratic  defini- 
tions: Parmenides  had  called  the  concept  of  pure 
Being  the  only  reality;  and  to  satisfy  the  strong 
dialectic  by  which  this  doctrine  was  supported  and 
at  the  same  time  to  bridge  the  infinite  chasm 
between  one  formless  substance  and  many  appear- 
ances irrelevant  to  it,  Plato  substituted  the  many 
Socratic  ideas,  all  of  which  were  relevant  to  ap- 


INTRODUCTION  25 

pearance,  for  the  one  concept  of  Parmenides. 
The  ideas  thus  acquired  what  is  called  metaphysi- 
cal subsistence;  for  they  stood  in  the  place  of  the 
Eleatic  Absolute,  and  at  the  same  time  were  the 
realities  that  phenomena  manifested. 

The  technique  of  this  combination  is  much  to 
be  admired;  but  the  feat  is  technical  and  adds 
nothing  to  the  significance  of  what  Plato  has  to 
say  on  any  concrete  subject.  This  barren  triumph 
was,  however,  fruitful  in  misunderstandings. 
The  characters  and  values  a  thing  possessed  were 
now  conceived  to  subsist  apart  from  it,  and  might 
even  have  preceded  it  and  caused  its  existence; 
a  mechanism  composed  of  values  and  definitions 
could  thus  be  placed  behind  phenomena  to  con- 
stitute a  substantial  physical  world.  Such  a 
dream  could  not  be  taken  seriously,  until  good 
sense  was  wholly  lost  and  a  bevy  of  magic  spirits 
could  be  imagined  peopling  the  infinite  and  yet 
carrying  on  the  business  of  earth.  Aristotle  re- 
jected the  metaphysical  subsistence  of  ideas,  but 
thought  they  might  still  be  essences  operative  in 
nature,  if  only  they  were  identified  with  the  life 
or  form  of  particular  things.  The  dream  thus 
lost  its  frank  wildness,  but  none  of  its  inherent 
incongruity:  for  the  sense  in  which  characters 
and  values  make  a  thing  what  it  is,  is  purely 
dialectical.  They  give  it  its  status  in  the  ideal 
world ;  but  the  appearance  of  these  characters 
and  values  here  and  now  is  what  needs  explan- 
ation  in  physics,  an  explanation  which  can  be 


26  THE    LIFE   OF   REASON 

furnished,  of  course,  only  by  the  physical  con- 
catenation and  distribution  of  causes. 

Aristotle   himself    did    not    fail    to 
Aristotle's        make    this    necessary    distinction    be- 

final  causes.       ,  m    •      i  i     j>  i 

Modern  sci-  twcen  eiTicient  cause  and  formal  es- 
encecan  scnce;  but  as  his  science  was  only 
expedients.  natural  history,  and  mechanism  had  no 
plausibility  in  his  eyes,  the  efficiency 
of  the  cause  was  always  due,  in  his  view,  to  its 
ideal  quality;  as  in  heredity  the  father's  human 
character,  not  his  physical  structure,  might  seem 
to  warrant  the  son's  humanity.  Every  ideal, 
before  it  could  be  embodied,  had  to  pre-exist  in 
some  other  embodiment;  but  as  when  the  ulti- 
mate purpose  of  the  cosmos  is  considered  it  seems 
to  lie  beyond  any  given  embodiment,  the  highest 
ideal  must  somehow  exist  disembodied.  It  must 
pre-exist,  thought  Aristotle,  in  order  to  supply,  by 
way  of  magic  attraction,  a  physical  cause  for  per- 
petual movement  in  the  world. 

It  must  be  confessed,  in  justice  to  this  consum- 
mate philosopher,  who  is  not  less  masterly  in  the 
use  of  knowledge  than  unhappy  in  divination,  that 
the  transformation  of  the  highest  good  into  a 
physical  power  is  merely  incidental  with  him,  and 
due  to  a  want  of  faith  (at  that  time  excusable) 
in  mechanism  and  evolution.  Aristotle's  deity  is 
always  a  moral  ideal  and  every  detail  in  its  defini- 
tion is  based  on  discrimination  between  the  better 
and  the  worse.  No  accommodation  to  the  ways 
of  nature  is  here  allowed  to  cloud  the  kingdom  of 


INTEODUCTION  27 

heaven ;  this  deity  is  not  condemned  to  do  whatever 
happens  nor  to  absorb  whatever  exists.  It  is  mythi- 
cal only  in  its  physical  application;  in  moral  phi- 
losophy it  remains  a  legitimate  conception. 

Truth  certainly  exists,  if  existence  be  not  too 
mean  an  attribute  for  that  eternal  realm  which  is 
tenanted  by  ideals;  but  truth  is  repugnant  to 
physical  or  psychical  being.  Moreover,  truth  may 
very  well  be  identified  with  an  impassible  intellect, 
which  should  do  nothing  but  possess  all  truth,  with 
no  point  of  view,  no  animal  warmth,  and  no  transi- 
tive process.  Such  an  intellect  and  truth  are  ex- 
pressions having  a  different  metaphorical  back- 
ground and  connotation,  but,  when  thought  out, 
an  identical  import.  They  both  attempt  to  evoke 
that  ideal  standard  which  human  thought  pro- 
poses to  itself.  This  function  is  their  effective 
essence.  It  insures  their  eternal  fixity,  and  this 
property  surely  endows  them  with  a  very  genuine 
and  sublime  reality.  What  is  fantastic  is  only  the 
dynamic  function  attributed  to  them  by  Aristotle, 
which  obliges  them  to  inhabit  some  fabulous  ex- 
tension to  the  physical  world.  Even  this  physical 
efficacy,  however,  is  spiritualised  as  much  as  pos- 
sible, since  deity  is  said  to  move  the  cosmos  only 
as  an  object  of  love  or  an  object  of  knowledge  may 
move  the  mind.  Such  efficacy  is  imputed  to  a 
hypostasised  end,  but  evidently  resides  in  fact  in 
the  functioning  and  impulsive  spirit  that  conceives 
and  pursues  an  ideal,  endowing  it  with  whatever 
attraction  it  may   seem  to  have.     The  absolute 


28  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

intellect  described  by  Aristotle  remains,  therefore, 
as  pertinent  to  the  Life  of  Reason  as  Plato's  idea 
of  the  good.  Though  less  comprehensive  (for  it 
abstracts  from  all  animal  interests,  from  all  pas- 
sion and  mortality),  it  is  more  adequate  and  dis- 
tinct in  the  region  it  dominates.  It  expresses 
sublimely  the  goal  of  speculative  thinking;  which 
is  none  other  than  to  live  as  much  as  may  be  in 
the  eternal  and  to  absorb  and  be  absorbed  in  the 
truth. 

The  rest  of  ancient  philosophy  belongs  to  the 
decadence  and  rests  in  physics  on  eclecticism  and 
in  morals  on  despair.  That  creative  breath  which 
had  stirred  the  founders  and  legislators  of  Greece 
no  longer  inspired  their  descendants.  Helpless  to 
control  the  course  of  events,  they  took  refuge  in 
abstention  or  in  conformity,  and  their  ethics 
became  a  matter  of  private  economy  and  senti- 
ment, no  longer  aspiring  to  mould  the  state  or 
give  any  positive  aim  to  existence.  The  time  was 
approaching  when  both  speculation  and  morals 
were  to  regard  the  other  world;  reason  had  abdi- 
cated the  throne,  and  religion,  after  that  brief 
interregnum,  resumed  it  for  long  ages. 

Such  are  the  threads  which  tradition  puts  into 
the  hands  of  an  observer  who  at  the  present  time 
might  attempt  to  knit  the  Life  of  Reason  ideally 
together.  The  problem  is  to  unite  a  trustworthy 
conception  of  the  conditions  under  which  man 
lives  with  an  adequate  conception  of  his  inter- 


INTRODUCTION  29 

ests.  Both  conceptions,  fortunately,  lie  before 
us.  Heraclitus  and  Democritus,  in  systems 
easily  seen  to  be  complementary,  gave  long 
ago  a  picture  of  nature  such  as  all  later 
observation,  down  to  our  own  day,  has  done  noth- 
ing but  fill  out  and  confirm.  Psychology  and 
physics  still  repeat  their  ideas,  often  with  richer 
detail,  but  never  with  a  more  radical  or  prophetic 
glance.  Nor  does  the  transcendental  philosophy, 
in  spite  of  its  self-esteem,  add  anything  essential. 
It  was  a  thing  taken  for  granted  in 
dentaiism  ancicut  and  scholastic  philosophy  that 
true  but  in-      a     being     dwelling,     like     man,     in 

consequential.    ...  t    ,  ^  < 

the  immediate,  whose  moments  are  m 
flux,  needed  constructive  reason  to  interpret  his 
experience  and  paint  in  his  unstable  consciousness 
some  symbolic  picture  of  the  world.  To  have 
reverted  to  this  constructive  process  and  studied 
its  stages  is  an  interesting  achievement;  but  the 
construction  is  already  made  by  common-sense 
and  science,  and  it  was  visionary  insolence  in  the 
Germans  to  propose  to  make  that  construc- 
tion otherwise.  Eetrospective  self-consciousness  is 
dearly  bought  if  it  inhibits  the  intellect  and  em- 
barrasses the  inferences  which,  in  its  spontaneous 
operation,  it  has  known  perfectly  how  to  make. 
In  the  heat  of  scientific  theorising  or  dialectical 
argument  it  is  sometimes  salutary  to  be  reminded 
that  we  are  men  thinking;  but,  after  all,  it  is 
no  news.  We  know  that  life  is  a  dream,  and  how 
should  thinking  be  more  ?     Yet  the  thinking  must 


30  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

go  on,  and  the  only  vital  question  is  to  what  prac- 
tical or  poetic  conceptions  it  is  able  to  lead  us. 

Similarly  the  Socratic  philosophy  affords  a 
noble  and  genuine  account  of  what  goods  may 
be  realised  by  living.  Modern  theory  has  not 
done  so  much  to  help  us  here,  however,  as  it  has 
in  physics.  It  seldom  occurs  to  modem  moralists 
that  theirs  is  the  science  of  all  good  and  the  art 
of  its  attainment;  they  think  only  of 
some  set  of  categorical  precepts  or  some 
theory  of  moral  sentiments,  abstracting  altogether 
from  the  ideals  reigning  in  society,  in  science,  and 
in  art.  They  deal  with  the  secondary  question 
What  ought  I  to  do?  without  having  answered 
the  primary  question,  What  ought  to  be?  They 
attach  morals  to  religion  rather  than  to  politics, 
and  this  religion  unhappily  long  ago  ceased  to  be 
wisdom  expressed  in  fancy  in  order  to  become 
superstition  overlaid  with  reasoning.  They  divide 
man  into  compartments  and  the  less  they  leave 
in  the  one  labelled  "  morality "  the  more  sub- 
lime they  think  their  morality  is;  and  sometimes 
pedantry  and  scholasticism  are  carried  so  far  that 
nothing  but  an  abstract  sense  of  duty  remains  in 
the  broad  region  which  should  contain  all  human 
goods. 

Such  trivial  sanctimony  in  morals  is  doubtless 
due  to  artificial  views  about  the  conditions  of  wel- 
fare; the  basis  is  laid  in  authority  rather  than  in 
human  nature,  and  the  goal  in  salvation  rather 
than  in  happiness.     One  great  modern  philoso- 


INTRODUCTION  31 

pher,  however,  was  free  from  these  preconceptions, 
and  might  have  reconstituted  the  Life  of  Eeason 
had  he  had  a  sufficient  interest  in  cul- 
and  the  ture.     Spinoza  brought  man  back  into 

Life  of  nature,  and  made  him  the  nucleus  of 

all  moral  values,  showing  how  he  may 
recognise  his  environment  and  how  he  may  master 
it.  But  Spinoza's  sympathy  with  mankind  fell 
short  of  imagination ;  any  noble  political  or  poeti- 
cal ideal  eluded  him.  Everything  impassioned 
seemed  to  him  insane,  everything  human  neces- 
sarily petty.  Man  was  to  be  a  pious  tame  animal, 
with  the  stars  shining  above  his  head.  Instead 
of  imagination  Spinoza  cultivated  mysticism, 
which  is  indeed  an  alternative.  A  prophet  in 
speculation,  he  remained  a  levite  in  sentiment. 
Little  or  nothing  would  need  to  be  changed  in  his 
system  if  the  Life  of  Eeason,  in  its  higher  ranges, 
were  to  be  grafted  upon  it;  but  such  affiliation 
is  not  necessary,  and  it  is  rendered  unnatural  by 
the  lack  of  sweep  and  generosity  in  Spinoza's 
practical  ideals. 

For  moral  philosophy  we  are  driven 
classic  sources  back,  then,  upon  the  ancients ;  but  not, 
of  inspira-  of  coursc,  for  moral  inspiration.  In- 
dustrialism and  democracy,  the  French 
Eevolution,  the  Eenaissance,  and  even  the  Catholic 
system,  which  in  the  midst  of  ancient  illusions 
enshrines  so  much  tenderness  and  wisdom,  still 
live  in  the  world,  though  forgotten  by  philoso- 
phers, and  point  unmistakably  toward  their  several 


32  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

goals.  Our  task  is  not  to  construct  but  only 
to  interpret  ideals,  confronting  them  with  one 
another  and  with  the  conditions  which,  for  the 
most  part,  they  alike  ignore.  There  is  no  need 
of  refuting  anything,  for  the  will  which  is  behind 
all  ideals  and  behind  most  dogmas  cannot  itself 
be  refuted ;  but  it  may  be  enlightened  and  led  to 
reconsider  its  intent,  when  its  satisfaction  is  seen 
to  be  either  naturally  impossible  or  inconsistent 
with  better  things.  The  age  of  controversy  is 
past ;  that  of  interpretation  has  succeeded. 

Here,  then,  is  the  programme  of  the  following 
work :  Starting  with  the  immediate  flux,  in  which 
all  objects  and  impulses  are  given,  to  describe  the 
Life  of  Reason;  that  is,  to  note  what  facts  and 
purposes  seem  to  be  primary,  to  show  how  the  con- 
ception of  nature  and  life  gathers  around  them, 
and  to  point  to  the  ideals  of  thought  and  action 
which  are  approached  by  this  gradual  mastering 
of  experience  by  reason.  A  great  task,  which  it 
would  be  beyond  the  powers  of  a  writer  in  this  age 
either  to  execute  or  to  conceive,  had  not  the  Greeks 
drawn  for  us  the  outlines  of  an  ideal  culture  at 
a  time  when  life  was  simpler  than  at  present  and 
individual  intelligence  more  resolute  and  free. 


REASON   IN   COMMON  SENSE 


CHAPTER   I 

THE  BIRTH  OF  EEASOIT 

WTiether  Chaos  or  Order  lay  at  the  beginning 

of  things  is  a  question  once  much  debated  in  the 

schools  but  afterward  long  in  abeyance,  not  so 

much  because  it  had  been  solved  as 

Existence  ,  ±       ^      -\    i  -i  i 

always  has       occause  One  party  had  been  silenced 
an  Order,         by  social   prcssurc.     The  question  is 

called  Chaos       ■,  -,    ,  •  i  i 

whenincom-  bouud  to  Tccur  in  an  age  when  obser- 
patibiewitha  yatiou  and  dialectic  again  freely  con- 
front each  other.  Naturalists  look  back 
to  chaos  since  they  observe  everything  growing 
from  seeds  and  shifting  its  character  in  regen- 
eration. The  order  now  established  in  the  world 
may  be  traeed  back  to  a  situation  in  which  it 
did  not  appear.  Dialecticians,  on  the  other 
hand,  refute  this  presumption  by  urging  that 
every  collocation  of  things  must  have  been  pre- 
ceded by  another  collocation  in  itself  no  less  defi- 
nite and  precise;  and  further  that  some  principle 
of  transition  or  continuity  must  always  have 
obtained,  else  successive  states  would  stand  in  no 
relation  to  one  another,  notably  not  in  the  relation 
of  cause  and  effect,  expressed  in  a  natural  law, 
which  is  presupposed  in  this  instance.     Potentiali- 

85 


36  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

ties  are  dispositions,  and  a  disposition  involves  an 
order,  as  does  also  the  passage  from  any  specific 
potentiality  into  act.  Thus  the  world,  we  are  told, 
must  always  have  possessed  a  structure. 

The  two  views  may  perhaps  be  reconciled  if  we 
take  each  with  a  qualification.  Chaos  doubtless 
has  existed  and  will  return — na}',  it  reigns  now, 
very  likely,  in  the  remoter  and  inmost  parts  of 
the  universe — if  by  chaos  we  understand  a  nature 
containing  none  of  the  objects  we  are  wont  to  dis- 
tinguish, a  nature  such  that  human  life  and  human 
thought  would  be  impossible  in  its  bosom ;  but  this 
nature  must  be  presumed  to  have  an  order,  an 
order  directly  importing,  if  the  tendency  of  its 
movement  be  taken  into  account,  all  the  complexi- 
ties and  beauties,  all  the  sense  and  reason  which 
exist  now.  Order  is  accordingly  continual;  but 
only  when  order  means  not  a  specific  arrangement, 
favourable  to  a  given  form  of  life,  but  any  arrange- 
ment whatsoever.  The  process  by  which  an  ar- 
rangement which  is  essentially  unstable  gradu- 
ally shifts  cannot  be  said  to  aim  at  every  stage 
which  at  any  moment  it  involves.  For  the  process 
passes  beyond.  It  presently  abolishes  all  the 
forms  which  may  have  arrested  attention  and  gen- 
erated love;  its  initial  energy  defeats  every  pur- 
pose which  we  may  fondly  attribute  to  it.  ISTor 
is  it  here  necessary  to  remind  ourselves  that  to 
call  results  their  own  causes  is  always  preposter- 
ous; for  in  this  case  even  the  mythical  sense 
which  might  be  attached  to  such  language  is  inap- 


THE    BIRTH    OF    REASON  37 

plicable.  Here  the  process,  taken  in  the  gross, 
does  not,  even  by  mechanical  necessity,  support  the 
value  which  is  supposed  to  guide  it.  That  value 
is  realised  for  a  moment  only ;  so  that  if  we  impute 
to  Cronos  any  intent  to  beget  his  children  we 
must  also  impute  to  him  an  intent  to  devour  them. 
.^   ,  Of  course  the  various  states  of  the 

Absolute 

order,  or  world,  when  we  survey  them  retro- 
truth,  IS         spectively,  constitute  another  and  now 

static,  im-  -^  ■^  ^ 

potent,  indif-  static  Order  called  historic  truth.  To 
ferent.  ^|^|g  absolute  and  impotent  order  every 

detail  is  essential.  If  we  wished  to  abuse  language 
so  much  as  to  speak  of  will  in  an  "  Absolute " 
where  change  is  excluded,  so  that  nothing  can  be  or 
be  conceived  beyond  it,  we  might  say  that  the  Ab- 
solute willed  everything  that  ever  exists,  and  that 
the  eternal  order  terminated  in  every  fact  indis- 
criminately; but  such  language  involves  an  after- 
image of  motion  and  life,  of  preparation,  risk,  and 
subsequent  accomplishment,  adventures  all  pre- 
supposing refractory  materials  and  excluded  from 
eternal  truth  by  its  very  essence.  The  only  function 
those  traditional  metaphors  have  is  to  shield  con- 
fusion and  sentimentality.  Because  Jehovah  once 
fought  for  the  Jews,  we  need  not  continue  to  say 
that  the  truth  is  solicitous  about  us,  when  it  is  only 
we  that  are  fighting  to  attain  it.  The  universe  can 
wish  particular  things  only  in  so  far  as  particu- 
lar beings  wish  them ;  only  in  its  relative  capacity 
can  it  find  things  good,  and  only  in  its  relative 
capacity  can  it  be  good  for  anything. 


38  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

The  efficacious  or  physical  order  which  exists  at 
any  moment  in  the  world  and  out  of  which  the 
next  moment's  order  is  developed,  may  accordingly 
be  termed  a  relative  chaos:  a  chaos,  because  the 
values  suggested  and  supported  by  the  second 
moment  could  not  have  belonged  to  the  first;  but 
merely  a  relative  chaos,  first  because  it  probably 
carried  values  of  its  own  which  rendered  it  an 
order  in  a  moral  and  eulogistic  sense,  and  sec- 
ondly because  it  was  potentially,  by  virtue  of 
its  momentum,  a  basis  for  the  second  moment's 
values  as  well. 

Human  life,  when  it  begins  to  pos- 
in  expen-        gggg   intrinsic    value,   is   an   incipient 

ence  order  is  ^ 

relative  to  Order  in  the  midst  of  what  seems  a 

"hiTd'  ^^^^  though,  to  some  extent,  a  vanish- 

termine  the  ing  chaos.     This  reputed  chaos  can  be 

moral  status  deciphered    and    appreciated   by   man 

of  all  powers.  ^_  . 

only  in  proportion  as  the  order  in  him- 
self is  confirmed  and  extended.  For  man's  con- 
sciousness is  evidently  practical;  it  clings  to  his 
fate,  registers,  so  to  speak,  the  higher  and  lower 
temperature  of  his  fortunes,  and,  so  far  as  it  can, 
represents  the  agencies  on  which  those  fortunes 
depend.  When  this  dramatic  vocation  of  con- 
sciousness has  not  been  fulfilled  at  all,  conscious- 
ness is  wholly  confused;  the  world  it  envisages 
seems  consequently  a  chaos.  Later,  if  .experience 
has  fallen  into  shape,  and  there  are  settled  cate- 
gories and  constant  objects  in  human  discourse, 
the   inference   is   drawn   that   the   original   dis- 


THE    BIKTH    OF    REASON  39 

position  of  things  was  also  orderly  and  indeed 
mechanically  conducive  to  just  those  feats  of 
instinct  and  intelligence  which  have  been  since 
accomplished.  A  theory  of  origins,  of  substance, 
and  of  natural  laws  may  thus  be  framed  and 
accepted,  and  may  receive  confirmation  in  the 
further  march  of  events.  It  will  be  observed,  how- 
ever, that  what  is  credibly  asserted  about  the  past 
is  not  a  report  which  the  past  was  itself  able  to 
make  when  it  existed  nor  one  it  is  now  able,  in 
some  oracular  fashion,  to  formulate  and  to  impose 
upon  us.  The  report  is  a  rational  construction 
based  and  seated  in  present  experience;  it  has  no 
cogency  for  the  inattentive  and  no  existence  for 
the  ignorant.  Although  the  universe,  then,  may 
not  have  come  from  chaos,  human  experience  cer- 
tainly has  begun  in  a  private  and  dreamful  chaos 
of  its  own,  out  of  which  it  still  only  partially  and 
momentarily  emerges.  The  history  of  this  awa- 
kening is  of  course  not  the  same  as  that  of 
the  environing  world  ultimately  discovered;  it  is 
the  history,  however,  of  that  discovery  itself,  of  the 
knowledge  through  which  alone  the  world  can  be 
revealed.  We  may  accordingly  dispense  ourselves 
from  preliminary  courtesies  to  the  real  universal 
order,  nature,  the  absolute,  and  the  gods.  We 
shall  make  their  acquaintance  in  due  season  and 
better  appreciate  their  moral  status,  if  we  strive 
merely  to  recall  our  own  experience,  and  to  retrace 
the  visions  and  reflections  out  of  which  those  ap- 
paritions have  grown. 


40  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

The  discov-  To  revGit  to  primordial  feeling  is  an 
eredcon-  exercisG  in  mental  disintegration,  not 
reaEon  not  ^  f^at  of  science.  We  might,  indeed, 
its  beginning,  as  in  animal  psychology,  retrace  the 
situations  in  which  instinct  and  sense  seem  first 
to  appear  and  write,  as  it  were,  a  genealogy  of  rea- 
son based  on  circumstantial  evidence.  Eeason 
was  born,  as  it  has  since  discovered,  into  a  world 
already  wonderfully  organised,  in  which  it  found 
its  precursor  in  what  is  called  life,  its  seat  in  an 
animal  body  of  unusual  plasticity,  and  its  func- 
tion in  rendering  that  body's  volatile  instincts  and 
sensations  harmonious  with  one  another  and  with 
the  outer  world  on  which  they  depend.  It  did 
not  arise  until  the  will  or  conscious  stress,  by  which 
any  modification  of  living  bodies'  inertia  seems 
to  be  accompanied,  began  to  respond  to  repre- 
sented objects,  and  to  maintain  that  inertia  not 
absolutely  by  resistance  but  only  relatively  and 
indirectly  through  labour.  Eeason  has  thus  super- 
vened at  the  last  stage  of  an  adaptation  which 
had  long  been  carried  on  by  irrational  and  even 
unconscious  processes.  Nature  preceded,  with 
all  that  fixation  of  impulses  and  conditions  which 
gives  reason  its  tasks  and  its  point-d'appui. 
Nevertheless,  such  a  matrix  or  cradle  for  reason 
belongs  only  externally  to  its  life.  The  descrip- 
tion of  conditions  involves  their  previous  discov- 
ery and  a  historian  equipped  with  many  data  and 
many  analogies  of  thought.  Such  scientific  re- 
sources are   absent   in   those   first   moments   of 


THE    BIRTH    OF    REASON  41 

rational  living  which  we  here  wish  to  recall;  the 
first  chapter  in  reason's  memoirs  would  no  more 
entail  the  description  of  its  real  environment  than 
the  first  chapter  in  human  history  would  include 
true  accounts  of  astronomy,  psychology,  and  ani- 
mal evolution. 

The  flux  I^  order  to  begin  at  the  beginning 

first.  •we  must  try  to  fall  back  on  uninter- 

preted feeling,  as  the  mystics  aspire  to  do.  We 
need  not  expect,  however,  to  find  peace  there,  for 
the  immediate  is  in  flux.  Pure  feeling  rejoices 
in  a  logical  nonentity  very  deceptive  to  dialectical 
minds.  They  often  think,  when  they  fall  back  on 
elements  necessarily  indescribable,  that  they  have 
come  upon  true  nothingness.  If  they  are  mys- 
tics, distrusting  thought  and  craving  the  large- 
ness of  indistinction,  they  may  embrace  this 
alleged  nothingness  with  joy,  even  if  it  seem  posi- 
tively painful,  hoping  to  find  rest  there  through 
self-abnegation.  If  on  the  contrary  they  are 
rationalists  they  may  reject  the  immediate  with 
scorn  and  deny  that  it  exists  at  all,  since  in  their 
books  they  cannot  define  it  satisfactorily.  Both 
mystics  and  rationalists,  however,  are  deceived  by 
their  mental  agility;  the  immediate  exists,  even  if 
dialectic  cannot  explain  it.  What  the  rationalist 
calls  nonentity  is  the  substrate  and  locus  of  all 
ideas,  having  the  obstinate  reality  of  matter,  the 
crushing  irrationality  of  existence  itself;  and  one 
who  attempts  to  override  it  becomes  to  that  extent 
an  irrelevant  rhapsodist,  dealing  with  thin  after- 


42  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

images  of  being.  Nor  has  the  mystic  who  sinks 
into  the  immediate  much  better  appreciated  the 
sitiiatioii.  This  immediate  is  not  God  but  chaos; 
its  nothingness  is  pregnant,  restless,  and  brutish; 
it  is  that  from  which  all  things  emerge  in  so  far 
as  they  have  any  permanence  or  value,  so  that  to 
lapse  into  it  again  is  a  dull  suicide  and  no  salva- 
tion. Peace,  which  is  after  all  what  the  mystic 
seeks,  lies  not  in  indistinction  but  in  perfection. 
If  he  reaches  it  in  a  measure  himself,  it  is  by  the 
traditional  discipline  he  still  practises,  not  by  his 
heats  or  his  languors. 

The  seed-bed  of  reason  lies,  then,  in  the  imme- 
diate, but  what  reason  draws  thence  is  momentum 
and  power  to  rise  above  its  source.  It  is  the  per- 
turbed immediate  itself  that  finds  or  at  least  seeks 
its  peace  in  reason,  through  which  it  comes  in 
sight  of  some  sort  of  ideal  permanence.  When 
the  tiux  manages  to  form  an  eddy  and  to  main- 
tain by  breathing  and  nutrition  what  we  call  a 
life,  it  affords  some  slight  foothold  and  object  for 
thought  and  becomes  in  a  measure  like  the  ark 
in  the  desert,  a  moving  habitation  for  the  eternal. 
,.,  ,^  _  Life  begins  to  have  some  value  and 

Life  the  fixa-  _  *= 

ationofin-  Continuity  so  soon  as  there  is  some- 
terests.  thing  definite  that  lives  and  something 

definite  to  live  for.  The  primacy  of  will,  as 
Fichte  and  Schopenhauer  conceived  it,  is  a  mythi- 
cal way  of  designating  this  situation.  Of  course 
a  will  can  have  no  being  in  the  absence  of  reali- 
ties or  ideas  marking  its  direction  and  contrast- 


THE    BIRTH   OF    REASON  43 

ing  the  eventualities  it  seeks  with  those  it  flies 
from ;  and  tendency,  no  less  than  movement,  needs 
an  organised  medium  to  make  it  possible,  while 
aspiration  and  fear  involve  an  ideal  world.  Yet 
a  principle  of  choice  is  not  deducible  from  mere 
ideas,  and  no  interest  is  involved  in  the  formal 
relations  of  things.  All  survey  needs  an  arbitrary 
starting-point;  all  valuation  rests  on  an  irrational 
bias.  The  absolute  flux  cannot  be  physically  ar- 
rested ;  but  what  arrests  it  ideally  is  the  fixing  of 
some  point  in  it  from  which  it  can  be  measured 
and  illumined.  Otherwise  it  could  show  no  form 
and  maintain  no  preference;  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  approach  or  recede  from  a  represented 
state,  and  to  suffer  or  to  exert  will  in  view  of 
events.  The  irrational  fate  that  lodges  the  tran- 
scendental self  in  this  or  that  body,  inspires  it 
with  definite  passions,  and  subjects  it  to  particular 
buffets  from  the  outer  world — this  is  the  prime 
condition  of  all  observation  and  inference,  of  all 
failure  or  success. 

Primary  Those  sensations  in  which  a  transi- 

duauties.  tiou  is  Contained  need  only  analysis  to 
yield  two  ideal  and  related  terms — two  points  in 
space  or  two  characters  in  feeling.  Hot  and  cold, 
here  and  there,  good  and  bad,  now  and  then,  are 
dyads  that  spring  into  being  when  the  flux  accen- 
tuates some  term  and  so  makes  possible  a  dis- 
crimination of  parts  and  directions  in  its  own 
movement.  An  initial  attitude  sustains  incipient 
interests.     What  we  first  discover  in   ourselves. 


44  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

before  the  influence  we  obey  has  given  rise  to  any 
definite  idea,  is  the  working  of  instincts  already 
in  motion.  Impulses  to  appropriate  and  to  reject 
first  teach  us  the  points  of  the  compass,  and  space 
itself,  like  charity,  begins  at  home. 
First  grop-  The  guidc  in  early  sensuous  educa- 

ings.  In-  tion  is  the  same  that  conducts  the 
nucleus  of  whole  Life  of  Reason,  namely,  impulse 
reason.  checked   by   experiment,    and    experi- 

ment judged  again  by  impulse.  What  teaches  the 
child  to  distinguish  the  nurse's  breast  from  sundry 
blank  or  disquieting  presences?  What  induces 
him  to  arrest  that  image,  to  mark  its  associates, 
and  to  recognise  them  with  alacrity?  The  dis- 
comfort of  its  absence  and  the  comfort  of  its 
possession.  To  that  image  is  attached  the  chief 
satisfaction  he  knows,  and  the  force  of  that 
satisfaction  disentangles  it  before  all  other  images 
from  the  feeble  and  fluid  continuum  of  his  life. 
What  first  awakens  in  him  a  sense  of  reality  is 
what  first  is  able  to  appease  his  unrest. 

Had  the  group  of  feelings,  now  welded  together 
in  fruition,  found  no  instinct  in  him  to  awaken 
and  become  a  signal  for,  the  group  would  never 
have  persisted;  its  loose  elements  would  have 
been  allowed  to  pass  by  unnoticed  and  would 
not  have  been  recognised  when  they  recurred. 
Experience  would  have  remained  absolute  inex- 
perience, as  foolishly  perpetual  as  the  gurglings 
of  rivers  or  the  flickerings  of  sunlight  in  a  grove. 
But  an  instinct  was  actually  present,  so  formed  as 


THE    BIRTH    OF    REASON  45 

to  be  aroused  by  a  determinate  stimulus;  and  the 
image  produced  by  that  stimulus,  when  it  came, 
could  have  in  consequence  a  meaning  and  an  in- 
dividuality. It  seemed  by  divine  right  to  signify 
something  interesting,  something  real,  because  by 
natural  contiguity  it  flowed  from  something  per- 
tinent and  important  to  life.  Every  accompany- 
ing sensation  which  shared  that  privilege,  or  in 
time  was  engrossed  in  that  function,  would  ulti- 
mately become  a  part  of  that  conceived  reality,  a 
quality  of  that  thing. 

The  same  primacy  of  impulses,  irrational  in 
themselves  but  expressive  of  bodily  functions,  is 
observable  in  the  behaviour  of  animals,  and  in 
those  dreams,  obsessions,  and  primary  passions 
which  in  the  midst  of  sophisticated  life  sometimes 
lay  bare  the  obscure  groundwork  of  human  nature. 
Eeason's  work  is  there  undone.  We  can  observe 
sporadic  growths,  disjointed  fragments  of  rational- 
ity, springing  up  in  a  moral  wilderness.  In  the 
passion  of  love,  for  instance,  a  cause  unknown  to 
the  sufferer,  but  which  is  doubtless  the  spring- 
flood  of  hereditary  instincts  accidentally  let  loose, 
suddenly  checks  the  young  man's  gayety,  dispels 
his  random  curiosity,  arrests  perhaps  his  very 
breath;  and  when  he  looks  for  a  cause  to  explain 
his  suspended  faculties,  he  can  find  it  only  in  the 
presence  or  image  of  another  being,  of  whose  char- 
acter, possibly,  he  knows  nothing  and  whose  beauty 
may  not  be  remarkable;  yet  that  image  pursues 
him  everywhere,  and  he  is  dominated  by  an  unac- 


46  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

customed  tragic  earnestness  and  a  new  capacity 
for  suffering  and  joy.  If  the  passion  be  strong 
there  is  no  previous  interest  or  duty  that  will  be 
remembered  before  it;  if  it  be  lasting  the  whole 
life  may  be  reorganised  by  it;  it  may  impose  new 
habits,  other  manners,  and  another  religion.  Yet 
what  is  the  root  of  all  this  idealism?  An  irra- 
tional instinct,  normally  intermittent,  such  as  all 
dumb  creatures  share,  which  has  here  managed  to 
dominate  a  human  soul  and  to  enlist  all  the  men- 
tal powers  in  its  more  or  less  permanent  service, 
upsetting  their  usual  equilibrium.  This  madness, 
however,  inspires  method;  and  for  the  first  time, 
perhaps,  in  his  life,  the  man  has  something  to 
live  for.  The  blind  affinity  that  like  a  magnet 
draws  all  the  faculties  around  it,  in  so  uniting 
them,  suffuses  them  with  an  unwonted  spiritual 
light. 

Better  and  Here,  on  a  small  scale  and  on  a  pre- 

worsethe        carious  foundation,  we  may  see  clearly 

fundamental  ''  _  *^ 

categories.  illustrated  and  foreshadowed  that  Life 
of  Reason  which  is  simply  the  unity  given  to  all 
existence  by  a  mind  in  love  with  the  good.  In  the 
higher  reaches  of  human  nature,  as  much  as  in 
the  lower,  rationality  depends  on  distinguishing 
the  excellent;  and  that  distinction  can  be  made, 
in  the  last  analysis,  only  by  an  irrational  impulse. 
As  life  is  a  better  form  given  to  force,  by  which 
the  universal  flux  is  subdued  to  create  and 
serve  a  somewhat  permanent  interest,  so  rea- 
son is  a  better  form  given  to  interest  itself,  by 


THE    BIRTH    OF    EEASON  47 

which  it  is  fortified  and  propagated,  and  ulti- 
mately, perhaps,  assured  of  satisfaction.  The 
substance  to  which  this  form  is  given  remains 
irrational;  so  that  rationality,  like  all  excellence, 
is  something  secondary  and  relative,  requiring  a 
natural  being  to  possess  or  to  impute  it.  When 
definite  interests  are  recognised  and  the  values  of 
things  are  estimated  by  that  standard,  action  at 
the  same  time  veering  in  harmony  with  that  esti- 
mation, then  reason  has  been  born  and  a  moral 
world  has  arisen. 


CHAPTER   II 

FIRST  STEPS   AND  FIRST  FLUCTUATIONS 

Consciousness    is    a    born    hermit. 

Dreams 

before  Though  subject,   by  divine  dispensa- 

thoughts.  ^JQjj^  ^Q  spells  of  fervour  and  apathy, 
like  a  singing  bird,  it  is  at  first  quite  unconcerned 
about  its  own  conditions  or  maintenance.  To 
acquire  a  notion  of  such  matters,  or  an  interest  in 
them,  it  would  have  to  lose  its  hearty  simplicity 
and  begin  to  reflect;  it  would  have  to  forget  the 
present  with  its  instant  joys  in  order  laboriously 
to  conceive  the  absent  and  the  hypothetical.  The 
body  may  be  said  to  make  for  self-preservation, 
since  it  has  an  organic  equilibrium  which,  when 
not  too  rudely  disturbed,  restores  itself  by  growth 
and  co-operative  action;  but  no  such  principle 
appears  in  the  soul.  Foolish  in  the  beginning 
and  generous  in  the  end,  consciousness  thinks  of 
nothing  so  little  as  of  its  own  interests.  It  is  lost 
in  its  objects;  nor  would  it  ever  acquire  even  an 
indirect  concern  in  its  future,  did  not  love  of 
things  external  attach  it  to  their  fortunes.  At- 
tachment to  ideal  terms  is  indeed  what  gives  con- 
sciousness its  continuity;  its  parts  have  no  rele- 
vance or  relation  to  one  another  save  what  they 

48 


M 


FIRST    STEPS  49 

acquire  by  depending  on  the  same  body  or  repre- 
senting the  same  objects.  Even  when  conscious- 
ness grows  sophisticated  and  thinks  it  cares  for 
itself,  it  really  cares  only  for  its  ideals ;  the  world 
it  pictures  seems  to  it  beautiful,  and  it  may  inci- 
dentally prize  itself  also,  when  it  has  come  to  re- 
gard itself  as  a  part  of  that  world.  Initially,  how- 
ever, it  is  free  even  from  that  honest  selfishness; 
it  looks  straight  out ;  it  is  interested  in  the  move- 
ments it  observes;  it  swells  with  the  represented 
world,  suffers  with  its  commotion,  and  subsides, 
no  less  willingly,  in  its  interludes  of  calm. 

Natural  history  and  psychology  arrive  at  con- 
sciousness from  the  outside,  and  consequently  give 
it  an  artificial  articulation  and  rationality  which 
are  wholly  alien  to  its  essence.  These  sciences 
infer  feeling  from  habit  or  expression;  so  that 
only  the  expressible  and  practical  aspects  of  feel- 
ing figure  in  their  calculation.  But  these  aspects 
are  really  peripheral;  the  core  is  an  irresponsible, 
ungoverned,  irrevocable  dream.  Psychologists 
have  discussed  perception  ad  nauseam  and  become 
horribly  entangled  in  a  combined  idealism  and 
physiology;  for  they  must  perforce  approach  the 
subject  from  the  side  of  matter,  since  all  science 
and  all  evidence  are  external;  nor  could  they  ever 
reach  consciousness  at  all  if  they  did  not  observe 
its  occasions  and  then  interpret  those  occasions 
dramatically.  At  the  same  time,  the  inferred 
mind  they  subject  to  examination  will  yield  noth- 
ing but  ideas,  and  it  is  a  marvel  how  such  a  dream 
Vol.  I.— 4 


50  THE    LIFE    OF   EEASON 

can  regard  those  natural  objects  from  which  the 
psychologist  has  inferred  it.  Perception  is  in  fact 
no  primary  phase  of  consciousness;  it  is  an  ulte- 
rior practical  function  acquired  by  a  dream  which 
has  become  symbolic  of  its  conditions,  and  there- 
fore relevant  to  its  own  destiny.  Such  relevance 
and  symbolism  are  indirect  and  slowly  acquired; 
their  status  cannot  be  understood  unless  we  regard 
them  as  forms  of  imagination  happily  grown  sig- 
nificant. In  imagination,  not  in  perception,  lies 
the  substance  of  experience,  while  knowledge  and 
reason  are  but  its  chastened  and  ultimate  form, 
~.       .  .  Every   actual   animal   is    somewhat 

The   mind  -^ 

vegetates  un-  dull  and  somewhat  mad.  He  will  at 
controued        times  miss  his  signals  and  stare  va- 

save  by  " 

physical  cautly  when  he  might  well  act,  while 

forces.  ^^  other  times  he  will  run  off  into  con- 

vulsions and  raise  a  dust  in  his  own  brain  to  no 
purpose.  These  imperfections  are  so  human  that 
we  should  hardly  recognise  ourselves  if  we  could 
shake  them  off  altogether.  Not  to  retain  any  dul- 
ness  would  mean  to  possess  untiring  attention  and 
universal  interests,  thus  realising  the  boast  about 
deeming  nothing  human  alien  to  us;  while  to  be 
absolutely  without  folly  would  involve  perfect  self- 
knowledge  and  self-control.  The  intelligent  man 
known  to  history  flourishes  within  a  dullard  and 
holds  a  lunatic  in  leash.  He  is  encased  in  a  pro- 
tective shell  of  ignorance  and  insensibility  which 
keeps  him  from  being  exhausted  and  confused  by 
this  too  complicated  world;  but  that  integument 


FIRST    STEPS  51 

blinds  him  at  the  same  time  to  many  of  his  near* 
est  and  highest  interests.  He  is  amused  by  the 
antics  of  the  brute  dreaming  within  his  breast; 
he  gloats  on  his  passionate  reveries,  an  amuse- 
ment which  sometimes  costs  him  very  dear.  Thus 
the  best  human  intelligence  is  still  decidedly  bar- 
barous ;  it  fights  in  heavy  armour  and  keeps  a  fool 
at  court. 

If  consciousness  could  ever  have  the  function 
of  guiding  conduct  better  than  instinct  can,  in  the 
beginning  it  would  be  most  incompetent  for  that 
office.  Only  the  routine  and  equilibrium  which 
healthy  instinct  involves  keep  thought  and  will  at 
all  within  the  limits  of  sanity.  The  predeter- 
mined  interests  we  have   as  animals 

Internal 

order  fortunatcly    focus    our    attention    on 

supervenes,  practical  things,  pulling  it  back,  like  a 
ball  with  an  elastic  cord,  within  the  radius  of 
pertinent  matters.  Instinct  alone  compels  us  to 
neglect  and  seldom  to  recall  the  irrelevant  infinity 
of  ideas.  Philosophers  have  sometimes  said  that 
all  ideas  come  from  experience;  they  never  could 
have  been  poets  and  must  have  forgotten  that  they 
were  ever  children.  The  great  difficulty  in  edu- 
cation is  to  get  experience  out  of  ideas.  Shame, 
conscience,  and  reason  continually  disallow  and 
ignore  what  consciousness  presents;  and  what  are 
they  but  habit  and  latent  instinct  asserting  them- 
selves and  forcing  us  to  disregard  our  midsum- 
mer madness?  Idiocy  and  lunacy  are  merely 
reversions  to  a  condition  in  which  present  con- 


52  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

sciousness  is  in  the  ascendant  and  has  escaped  the 
control  of  unconscious  forces.  We  speak  of  people 
being  "  out  of  their  senses,"  when  they  have  in 
fact  fallen  back  into  them;  or  of  those  who  have 
"  lost  their  mind,"  when  they  have  lost  merely  that 
habitual  control  over  consciousness  which  pre- 
vented it  from  flaring  into  all  sorts  of  obsessions 
and  agonies.  Their  bodies  having  become  de- 
ranged, their  minds,  far  from  correcting  that 
derangement,  instantly  share  and  betray  it.  A 
dream  is  always  simmering  below  the  conventional 
surface  of  speech  and  reflection.  Even  in  the 
highest  reaches  and  serenest  meditations  of  science 
it  sometimes  breaks  through.  Even  there  we  are 
seldom  constant  enough  to  conceive  a  truly  natural 
world;  somewhere  passionate,  fanciful,  or  magic 
elements  will  slip  into  the  scheme  and  baffle 
rational  ambition. 

A  body  seriously  out  of  equilibrium,  either  with 
itself  or  with  its  environment,  perishes  outright. 
Not  so  a  mind.  Madness  and  suffering  can  set 
themselves  no  limit;  they  lapse  only  when  the 
corporeal  frame  that  sustains  them  yields  to  cir- 
cumstances and  changes  its  habit.  If  they  are 
unstable  at  all,  it  is  because  they  ordinarily  corre- 
spond to  strains  and  conjunctions  which  a  vig- 
orous body  overcomes,  or  which  dissolve  the  body 
altogether.  A  pain  not  incidental  to  the  play  of 
practical  instincts  may  easily  be  recurrent,  and  it 
might  be  perpetual  if  even  the  worst  habits  were 
not  intermittent  and  the  most  useless  agitations 


FIEST    STEPS  53 

exhausting.  Some  respite  will  therefore  ensue 
upon  pain,  but  no  magic  cure.  Madness,  in  like 
manner,  if  pronounced,  is  precarious,  but  when 
speculative  enough  to  be  harmless  or  not  strong 
enough  to  be  debilitating,  it  too  may  last  for 
ever. 

An  imaginative  life  may  therefore  exist  para- 
sitically  in  a  man,  hardly  touching  his  action  or 
environment.  There  is  no  possibility  of  exorcis- 
ing these  apparitions  by  their  own  power.  A 
nightmare  does  not  dispel  itself;  it  endures  until 
the  organic  strain  which  caused  it  is  relaxed  either 
by  natural  exhaustion  or  by  some  external  in- 
fluence. Therefore  human  ideas  are  still  for  the 
most  part  sensuous  and  trivial,  shifting  with  the 
chance  currents  of  the  brain,  and  representing 
nothing,  so  to  speak,  but  personal  temperature. 
Personal  temperature,  moreover,  is  sometimes 
tropical.  There  are  brains  like  a  South  Ameri- 
can jungle,  as  there  are  others  like  an  Arabian 
desert,  strewn  with  nothing  but  bones.  While  a 
passionate  sultriness  prevails  in  the  mind  there  is 
no  end  to  its  luxuriance.  Languages  intricately 
articulate,  flaming  mythologies,  metaphysical  per- 
spectives lost  in  infinity,  arise  in  remarkable 
profusion.  In  time,  however,  there  comes  a 
change  of  climate  and  the  whole  forest  dis- 
appears. 

It  is  easy,  from  the  stand-point  of  acquired  prac- 
tical competence,  to  deride  a  merely  imaginative 
life.     Derision,  however,  is  not  interpretation,  and 


54  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

the  better  method  of  overcoming  erratic  ideas  is 
to  trace  them  out  dialectically  and  see  if  they  will 
not  recognise  their  own  fatuity.  The  most  irre- 
sponsible vision  has  certain  principles  of  order  and 
valuation  by  which  it  estimates  itself ;  and  in  these 
principles  the  Life  of  Reason  is  already  broached, 
however  halting  may  be  its  development.  We 
should  lead  ourselves  out  of  our  dream,  as  the 
Israelites  were  led  out  of  Egypt,  by  the  promise 
and  eloquence  of  that  dream  itself.  Otherwise  we 
might  kill  the  goose  that  lays  the  golden  egg,  and 
by  proscribing  imagination  abolish  science. 
-  ^ .   .  Visionary    experience    has    a    first 

Intnnsic  -^  ^ 

pleasure  in      value    in    its    possible    pleasantness. 

existence.  y^^^  ^^^  ^^^^  ^^  f^^^-^g  ^^^^^^  ^^  ^^_ 

lightful  is  not  to  be  explained  transcendentally : 
a  physiological  law  may,  after  the  fact,  render 
every  instance  predictable;  but  no  logical  affinity 
between  the  formal  quality  of  an  experience  and 
the  impulse  to  welcome  it  will  thereby  be  disclosed. 
We  find,  however,  that  pleasure  suffuses  certain 
states  of  mind  and  pain  others;  which  is  another 
way  of  saying  that,  for  no  reason,  we  love  the 
first  and  detest  the  second.  The  polemic  which 
certain  moralists  have  waged  against  pleasure  and 
in  favour  of  pain  is  intelligible  when  we  remem- 
ber that  their  chief  interest  is  edification,  and  that 
ability  to  resist  pleasure  and  pain  alike  is  a  val- 
uable virtue  in  a  world  where  action  and  renun- 
ciation are  the  twin  keys  to  happiness.  But  to 
deny  that  pleasure  is  a  good  and  pain  an  evil 


FIKST    STEPS  55 

is  a  grotesque  affectation :  it  amounts  to  giving 
"good"  and  "  evil "  artificial  definitions  and  there- 
pieasure  a  ^J  reducing  ethics  to  arbitrary  verbi- 
good,  age.     Not  only  is  good  that  adherence 

of  the  will  to  experience  of  which  pleasure  is  the 
basal  example,  and  evil  the  corresponding  rejec- 
tion which  is  the  very  essence  of  pain,  but  when 
we  pass  from  good  and  evil  in  sense  to  their  high- 
est embodiments,  pleasure  remains  eligible  and 
pain  something  which  it  is  a  duty  to  prevent.  A 
man  who  without  necessity  deprived  any  person  of 
a  pleasure  or  imposed  on  him  a  pain,  would  be  a 
contemptible  knave,  and  the  person  so  injured 
would  be  the  first  to  declare  it,  nor  could  the  high- 
est celestial  tribunal,  if  it  was  just,  reverse  that 
sentence.  For  it  suffices  that  one  being,  however 
weak,  loves  or  abhors  anything,  no  "matter  how 
slightly,  for  that  thing  to  acquire  a  proportionate 
value  which  no  chorus  of  contradiction  ringing 
through  all  the  spheres  can  ever  wholly  abolish. 
('An  experience  good  or  bad  in  itself  remains  so 
for  ever,  and  its  inclusion  in  a  more  general  order 
of  things  can  only  change  that  totality  propor- 
tionately to  the  ingredient  absorbed,  which  will 
infect  the  mass,  so  far  as  it  goes,  with  its  own 
colour.  The  more  pleasure  a  universe  can  yield, 
other  things  being  equal,  the  more  beneficent  and 
generous  is  its  general  nature;  the  more  pains  its 
constitution  involves,  the  darker  and  more  malign 
is  its  total  temper.  To  deny  this  would  seem  im- 
possible, yet  it  is  done  daily ;  for  there  is  nothing 


56  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

people  will  not  maintain  when  they  are  slaves  to 
superstition;  and  candour  and  a  sense  of  justice 
are,  in  such  a  case,  the  first  things  lost. 

Pleasures   differ   sensibly  in  inten- 

but  not  pur-  *' 

sued  or  re-  sity ;  but  the  intensest  pleasures  are 
membered       ^^^^^  ^^^  blindest,  and  it  is  hard  to 

unless  it  ... 

suffuses  an  recall  or  estimate  a  feeling  with  which 
object.  ^^    definite    and    complex    object    is 

conjoined.  The  first  step  in  making  pleasure 
intelligible  and  capable  of  being  pursued  is  to  make 
it  pleasure  in  something.  The  object  it  suffuses 
acquires  a  value,  and  gives  the  pleasure  itself  a 
place  in  rational  life.  The  pleasure  can  now  be 
named,  its  variations  studied  in  reference  to 
changes  in  its  object,  and  its  comings  and  goings 
foreseen  in  the  order  of  events.  The  more  articu- 
late the  world  that  produces  emotion  the  more 
controllable  and  recoverable  is  the  emotion  itself. 
Therefore  diversity  and  order  in  ideas  makes  the 
life  of  pleasure  richer  and  easier  to  lead.  A  volu- 
minous dumb  pleasure  might  indeed  outweigh  the 
pleasure  spread  thin  over  a  multitude  of  tame 
perceptions,  if  we  could  only  weigh  the  two  in  one 
scale;  but  to  do  so  is  impossible,  and  in  memory 
and  prospect,  if  not  in  experience,  diversified 
pleasure  must  needs  carry  the  day. 
Subhuman  Here    we    come    upon    a    crisis    in 

deUghts.  human     development     which     shows 

clearly  how  much  the  Life  of  Eeason  is  a  natural 
thing,  a  growth  that  a  different  course  of  events 
might  well  have  excluded.     Laplace  is  reported  to 


FIRST    STEPS  57 

have  said  on  his  death-bed  that  science  was  mere 
trifling  and  that  nothing  was  real  but  love.  Love, 
for  such  a  man,  doubtless  involved  objects  and 
ideas :  it  was  love  of  persons.  The  same  revulsion 
of  feeling  may,  however,  be  carried  further. 
Lucretius  says  that  passion  is  a  torment  because 
its  pleasures  are  not  pure,  that  is,  because  they  are 
mingled  with  longing  and  entangled  in  vexatious 
things.  Pure  pleasure  would  be  without  ideas. 
Many  a  man  has  found  in  some  moment  of  his 
life  an  unutterable  joy  which  made  all  the  rest  of 
it  seem  a  farce,  as  if  a  corpse  should  play  it  was 
living.  Mystics  habitually  look  beneath  the  Life- 
of  Eeason  for  the  substance  and  infinity  of  happi- 
ness. In  all  these  revulsions,  and  many  others, 
there  is  a  certain  justification,  inasmuch  as  sys- 
tematic living  is  after  all  an  experiment,  as  is  the 
formation  of  animal  bodies,  and  the  inorganic 
pulp  out  of  which  these  growths  have  come  may 
very  likely  have  had  its  own  incommunicable  val- 
ues, its  absolute  thrills,  which  we  vainly  try  to 
remember  and  to  which,  in  moments  of  dissolu- 
tion, we  may  half  revert.  Protoplasmic  pleasures 
and  strains  may  be  the  substance  of  consciousness ; 
and  as  matter  seeks  its  own  level,  and  as  the  sea 
and  the  flat  waste  to  which  all  dust  returns  have 
a  certain  primordial  life  and  a  certain  sublimity, 
so  all  passions  and  ideas,  when  spent,  may  re- 
join the  basal  note  of  feeling,  and  enlarge  their 
volume  as  they  lose  their  form.  This  loss  of  form 
may  not  be  unwelcome,  if  it  is  the  formless  that, 


58  THE   LIFE   OF   REASON 

by  anticipation,  speaks  through  what  is  surrender- 
ing its  being.  Though  to  acquire  or  impart  form 
is  delightful  in  art,  in  thought,  in  generation,  in 
government,  yet  a  euthanasia  of  finitude  is  also 
known.  All  is  not  affectation  in  the  poet  who 
says,  "Now  more  than  ever  seems  it  rich  to  die" ; 
and,  without  any  poetry  or  affectation,  men  may 
love  sleep,  and  opiates,  and  every  luxurious  escape 
from  humanity. 

The  step  by  which  pleasure  and  pain  are  at- 
tached to  ideas,  so  as  to  be  predictable  and  to 
become  factors  in  action,  is  therefore  by  no  means 
irrevocable.  It  is  a  step,  however,  in  the  direc- 
tion of  reason;  and  though  reason's  path  is  only 
one  of  innumerable  courses  perhaps  open  to  ex- 
istence, it  is  the  only  one  that  we  are  tracing  here ; 
the  only  one,  obviously,  which  human  discourse  is 
competent  to  trace. 

Animal  \Vhen  consciousncss  begins  to  add 

Uving.  diversity  to  its  intensity,  its  value  is  no 

longer  absolute  and  inexpressible.  The  felt  varia- 
tions in  its  tone  are  attached  to  the  observed 
movement  of  its  objects ;  in  these  objects  its  values 
are  imbedded.  A  world  loaded  with  dramatic 
values  may  thus  arise  in  imagination ;  terrible  and 
delightful  presences  may  chase  one  another  across 
the  void ;  life  will  be  a  kind  of  music  made  by  all 
the  senses  together.  Many  animals  probably  have 
this  form  of  experience;  they  are  not  wholly  sub- 
merged in  a  vegetative  stupor;  they  can  discern 
what  they  love  or  fear.     Yet  all  this  is  still  a 


FIRST    STEPS  59 

disordered  apparition  that  reels  itself  off  amid 
sporadic  movements,  efforts,  and  agonies.  Now 
gorgeous,  now  exciting,  now  indifferent,  the  land- 
scape brightens  and  fades  with  the  day.  If  a  dog, 
while  sniffing  about  contentedly,  sees  afar  off  his 
master  arriving  after  long  absence,  the  change  in 
the  animal's  feeling  is  not  merely  in  the  quantity 
of  pure  pleasure;  a  new  circle  of  sensations  ap- 
pears, with  a  new  principle  governing  interest  and 
desire;  instead  of  waywardness  subjection,  instead 
of  freedom  love.  But  the  poor  brute  asks  for  no 
reason  why  his  master  went,  why  he  has  come 
again,  why  he  should  be  loved,  or  why  pres- 
ently while  lying  at  his  feet  you  forget  him  and 
begin  to  grunt  and  dream  of  the  chase — all  that 
is  an  utter  mystery,  utterly  unconsidered.  Such 
experience  has  variety,  scenery,  and  a  certain  vital 
rhythm;  its  story  might  be  told  in  dithyrambic 
verse.  It  moves  wholly  by  inspiration;  every 
event  is  providential,  every  act  unpremeditated. 
Absolute  freedom  and  absolute  helplessness  have 
met  together :  you  depend  wholly  on  divine  favour, 
yet  that  unfathomable  agency  is  not  distinguish- 
able from  your  own  life.  This  is  the  condition 
to  which  some  forms  of  piety  invite  men  to  return ; 
and  it  lies  in  truth  not  far  beneath  the  level  of 
ordinary  human  consciousness. 
Causes  at  "^^^  story  which  such  animal  experi- 

last  dis-         ence  contains,  however,  needs  only  to 
cerned.  ^^  better  articulated  in  order  to  dis- 

close its  underlying  machinery.     The  figures  even 


60  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

of  that  disordered  drama  have  their  exits  and  their 
entrances ;  and  their  cues  can  be  gradually  discov- 
ered by  a  being  capable  of  fixing  his  attention  and 
retaining  the  order  of  events.  Thereupon  a  third 
step  is  made  in  imaginative  experience.  As  pleas- 
ures and  pains  were  formerly  distributed  among 
objects,  so  objects  are  now  marshalled  into  a  world. 
Felix  qui  potuit  rerum  cognoscere  causas,  said  a 
poet  who  stood  near  enough  to  fundamental 
human  needs  and  to  the  great  answer  which  art 
and  civilisation  can  make  to  them,  to  value  the 
Life  of  Eeason  and  think  it  sublime.  To  discern 
causes  is  to  turn  vision  into  knowledge  and  motion 
into  action.  It  is  to  fix  the  associates  of  things, 
so  that  their  respective  transformations  are  col- 
lated, and  they  become  significant  of  one  another. 
In  proportion  as  such  understanding  advances 
each  moment  of  experience  becomes  consequen- 
tial and  prophetic  of  the  rest.  The  calm  places 
in  life  are  filled  with  power  and  its  spasms  with 
resource.  No  emotion  can  overwhelm  the  mind, 
for  of  none  is  the  basis  or  issue  wholly  hidden; 
no  event  can  disconcert  it  altogether,  because  it 
sees  beyond.  Means  can  be  looked  for  to  escape 
from  the  worst  predicament;  and  whereas  each 
moment  had  been  formerly  filled  with  nothing  but 
its  own  adventure  and  surprised  emotion,  each  now 
makes  room  for  the  lesson  of  what  went  before 
and  surmises  what  may  be  the  plot  of  the  whole. 

At  the  threshold  of  reason  there  is  a  kind  of 
choice.     Not  all  impressions  contribute  equally  to 


FIEST    STEPS  61 

the  new  growth;  many,  in  fact,  which  were  for- 
merly equal  in  rank  to  the  best,  now  grow  obscure. 
Attention  ignores  them,  in  its  haste  to  arrive  at 
what  is  significant  of  something  more.  Nor  are 
the  principles  of  synthesis,  by  which  the  aristo- 
cratic few  establish  their  oligarchy,  themselves  un- 
equivocal. The  first  principles  of  logic  are  like 
the  senses,  few  but  arbitrary.  They  might  have 
been  quite  different  and, yet  produced,  by  a  now 
unthinkable  method,  a  language  no  less  significant 
than  the  one  we  speak.  Twenty-six  letters  may 
suffice  for  a  language,  but  they  are  a  wretched 
minority  among  all  possible  sounds.  So  the 
forms  of  perception  and  the  categories  of  thought, 
which  a  grammarian's  philosophy  might  think 
primordial  necessities,  are  no  less  casual  than 
words  or  their  syntactical  order.  Why,  we  may 
ask,  did  these  forms  assert  themselves  here? 
What  principles  of  selection  guide  mental  growth  ? 
To  give  a  logical  ground  for  such  a  selection  is 
evidently  impossible,  since  it  is  logic  itself  that  is 
to  be  accounted  for.  A  natural  ground  is,  in 
strictness,  also  irrelevant,  since  natural  connec- 
tions, where  thought  has  not  reduced  them  to  a 
sort  of  equivalence  and  necessity,  are  mere  data 
and  juxtapositions.  Yet  it  is  not  necessary  to 
leave  the  question  altogether  unanswered.  By 
using  our  senses  we  may  discover,  not  indeed  why 
each  sense  has  its  specific  quality  or  exists  at  all, 
but  what  are  its  organs  and  occasions.  In  like 
manner  we  may,  by  developing  the  Life  of  Reason, 


62  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

come  to  understand  its  conditions.  When  con- 
sciousness awakes  the  body  has,  as  we  long  after- 
Attention  ward  discover,  a  definite  organisation, 
guided  by        Without  guidance  from  reflection  bod- 

bodily  im-  o 

pulse.  ily  processes  have  been  going  on,  and 

most  precise  affinities  and  reactions  have  been  set 
up  between  its  organs  and  the  surrounding  objects. 
On  these  affinities  and  reactions  sense  and  in- 
tellect are  grafted.  The  plants  are  of  different 
nature,  yet  growing  together  they  bear  excellent 
fruit.  It  is  as  the  organs  receive  appropriate 
stimulations  that  attention  is  riveted  on  definite 
sensations.  It  is  as  the  system  exercises  its 
natural  activities  that  passion,  will,  and  medita- 
tion possess  the  mind.  No  syllogism  is  needed  to 
persuade  us  to  eat,  no  prophecy  of  happiness  to 
teach  us  to  love.  On  the  contrary,  the  living 
organism,  caught  in  the  act,  informs  us  how  to 
reason  and  what  to  enjoy.  The  soul  adopts  the 
body's  aims ;  from  the  body  and  from  its  instincts 
she  draws  a  first  hint  of  the  right  means  to  those 
accepted  purposes.  Thus  reason  enters  into  part- 
nership with  the  world  and  begins  to  be  respected 
there;  which  it  would  never  be  if  it  were  not  ex- 
pressive of  the  same  mechanical  forces  that  are  to 
preside  over  events  and  render  them  fortunate  or 
unfortunate  for  human  interests.  Reason  is  sig- 
nificant in  action  only  because  it  has  begun  by 
taking,  so  to  speak,  the  body's  side;  that  sjTupa- 
thetic  bias  enables  her  to  distinguish  events  per- 
tinent to  the  chosen  interests,  to  compare  im- 


FIRST    STEPS  63 

pulse  with  satisfaction^  and,  by  representing  a  new 
and  circular  current  in  the  system,  to  preside  over 
the  formation  of  better  habits,  habits  expressing 
more  instincts  at  once  and  responding  to  more 
opportunities. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  DISCOVERY   OF   NATURAL  OBJECTS 

At  first  siffht  it  might  seem  an  idle 

Nature  »  •        t 

man's  observation  that  the  first  task  of  intel- 

home.  ligence  is  to  represent  the  environing 

reality;  a  reality  actually  represented  in  the  notion, 
universally  prevalent  among  men,  of  a  cosmos  in 
space  and  time,  an  animated  material  engine 
called  nature.  In  trying  to  conceive  nature  the 
mind  lisps  its  first  lesson ;  natural  phenomena  are 
the  mother  tongue  of  imagination  no  less  than 
of  science  and  practical  life.  Men  and  gods  are 
not  conceivable  otherwise  than  as  inhabitants 
of  nature.  Early  experience  knows  no  mystery 
which  is  not  somehow  rooted  in  transformations 
of  the  natural  world,  and  fancy  can  build  no  hope 
which  would  not  be  expressible  there.  But  we  are 
grown  so  accustomed  to  this  ancient  apparition 
that  we  may  be  no  longer  aware  how  difficult  was 
the  task  of  conjuring  it  up.  We  may  even  have 
forgotten  the  possibility  that  such  a  vision  should 
never  have  arisen  at  all.  A  brief  excursion  into 
that  much  abused  subject,  the  psychology  of  per- 
ception, may  here  serve  to  remind  us  of  the  great 

64 


DISCOVERY    OF    NATURAL    OBJECTS       65 

work  which  the  budding  intellect  must  long  ago 

have  accomplished  unawares. 

^.-    ,,.  Consider    how    the    shocks    out    of 

Difficulties 

in  conceiv-      which  the  uotion  of  material  things  is 

ing  nature.         ^^    ^^   ^^^-j^    ^^^^    g^j.-j,g   ^^^^   ^^^^   ^^^ 

soul.  Eye  and  hand,  if  we  may  neglect  the  other 
senses,  transmit  their  successive  impressions,  all 
varying  with  the  position  of  outer  objects  and  with 
the  other  material  conditions.  A  chaos  of  multi- 
tudinous impressions  rains  in  from  all  sides  at  all 
hours.  Nor  have  the  external  or  cognitive  senses 
an  original  primacy.  The  taste,  the  smell,  the 
alarming  sounds  of  things  are  continually  distract- 
ing attention.  There  are  infinite  reverberations  in 
memory  of  all  former  impressions,  together  with 
fresh  fancies  created  in  the  brain,  things  at  first  in 
no  wise  subordinated  to  external  objects.  All  these 
incongruous  elements  are  mingled  like  a  witches' 
brew.  And  more :  there  are  indications  that  inner 
sensations,  such  as  those  of  digestion,  have  an 
overpowering  influence  on  the  primitive  mind, 
which  has  not  learned  to  articulate  or  distinguish 
permanent  needs.  So  that  to  the  whirl  of  outer 
sensations  we  must  add,  to  reach  some  notion  of 
what  consciousness  may  contain  before  the  advent 
of  reason,  interruptions  and  lethargies  caused  by 
wholly  blind  internal  feelings ;  trances  such  as  fall 
even  on  comparatively  articulate  minds  in  rage, 
lust,  or  madness.  Against  all  these  bewildering 
forces  the  new-born  reason  has  to  struggle ;  and  we 
need  not  wonder  that  the  costly  experiments  and 
Vol.  I.-fi 


66  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

disillusions  of  the  past  have  not  yet  produced  a 
complete  enlightenment. 

The  onslaught  made  in  the  last  cen- 

Transcen-  ° 

dental  tury  by  the  transcendental  philosophy 

qualms.  upon  empirical  traditions  is  familiar 

to  everybody:  it  seemed  a  pertinent  attack,  yet  in 
the  end  proved  quite  trifling  and  unavailing. 
Thought,  we  are  told  rightly  enough,  cannot  be 
accounted  for  by  enumerating  its  conditions.  A 
number  of  detached  sensations,  being  each  its 
own  little  world,  cannot  add  themselves  together 
nor  conjoin  themselves  in  the  void.  Again,  ex- 
periences having  an  alleged  common  cause  would 
not  have,  merely  for  that  reason,  a  common  object. 
Nor  would  a  series  of  successive  perceptions,  no 
matter  how  quick,  logically  involve  a  sense  of  time 
nor  a  notion  of  succession.  Yet,  in  point  of  fact, 
when  such  a  succession  occurs  and  a  living  brain  is 
there  to  acquire  some  structural  modification  by 
virtue  of  its  own  passing  states,  a  memory  of  that 
succession  and  its  terms  may  often  supervene.  It 
is  quite  true  also  that  the  simultaneous  presence 
or  association  of  images  belonging  to  different 
senses  does  not  carry  with  it  by  intrinsic  necessity 
any  fusion  of  such  images  nor  any  notion  of  an 
object  having  them  for  its  qualities.  Yet,  in 
point  of  fact,  such  a  group  of  sensations  does 
often  merge  into  a  complex  image;  instead  of  the 
elements  originally  perceptible  in  isolation,  there 
arises  a  familiar  term,  a  sort  of  personal  presence. 
To  this  felt  presence,  certain  instinctive  reactions 


DISCOVERY    OF    NATURAL    OBJECTS        67 

are  attached,  and  the  sensations  that  may  be  in- 
volved in  that  apparition,  when  each  for  any  rea- 
son becomes  emphatic,  are  referred  to  it  as  its 
qualities  or  its  effects. 

Such  complications  of  course  involve  the  gift  of 
memory,  with  capacity  to  survey  at  once  vestiges 
of  many  perceptions,  to  feel  their  implication 
and  absorption  in  the  present  object,  and  to  be 
carried,  by  this  sense  of  relation,  to  the  thought 
that  those  perceptions  have  a  representative 
function.  And  this  is  a  great  step.  It  mani- 
fests the  mind's  powers.  It  illustrates  those 
transformations  of  cofisciousness  the  principle  of 
which,  when  abstracted,  we  call  intelligence.  We 
must  accordingly  proceed  with  caution,  for  we  are 
digging  at  the  very  roots  of  reason. 
Thought  an  The  chicf  perplexity,  however,  which 
aspect  of         besets  this  subject  and  makes  discus- 

hfe  and  "" 

transitive.  sious  of  it  SO  oftcu  end  in  a  cloud,  is 
quite  artificial.  Thought  is  not  a  mechanical  cal- 
culus, where  the  elements  and  the  method  exhaust 
the  fact.  Thought  is  a  form  of  life,  and  should 
be  conceived  on  the  analogy  of  nutrition,  genera- 
tion, and  art.  Reason,  as  Hume  said  with  pro- 
found truth,  is  an  unintelligible  instinct.  It  could 
not  be  otherwise  if  reason  is  to  remain  something 
transitive  and  existential;  for  transition  is  unin- 
telligible, and  yet  is  the  deepest  characteristic  of 
existence.  Philosophers,  however,  having  per-, 
ceived  that  the  function  of  thought  is  to  fix  static 
terms  and  reveal  eternal  relations,  have  inadver- 


68  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

tently  transferred  to  the  living  act  what  is  true 
only  of  its  ideal  object;  and  they  have  expected 
to  find  in  the  process,  treated  psychologicallj^  that 
luminous  deductive  clearness  which  belongs  to  the 
ideal  world  it  tends  to  reveal.  The  intelligible, 
however,  lies  at  the  periphery  of  experience,  the 
surd  at  its  core ;  and  intelligence  is  but  one  centrif- 
ugal ray  darting  from  the  slime  to  the  stars. 
Thought  must  execute  a  metamorphosis;  and 
while  this  is  of  course  mysterious,  it  is  one  of  those 
familiar  mysteries,  like  motion  and  will,  which 
are  more  natural  than  dialectical  lucidity  itself; 
for  dialectic  grows  cogent  by  fulfilling  intent,  but 
intent  or  meaning  is  itself  vital  and  inexplicable. 
Perception  The  process  of  counting  is  perhaps 

cumuia-  g^g  sijjipig  ^n  instance  as  can  be  found 

tive  and  syn-  ^ 

thetic.  of  a  mental  operation  on  sensible  data. 

The  clock,  let  us  say,  strikes  two :  if  the  sensorium 
were  perfectly  elastic  and  after  receiving  the  first 
blow  reverted  exactly  to  its  previous  state,  retain- 
ing absolutely  no  trace  of  that  momentary  oscil- 
lation and  no  altered  habit,  then  it  is  certain  that 
a  sense  for  number  or  a  faculty  of  counting  could 
never  arise.  The  second  stroke  would  be  re- 
sponded to  with  the  same  reaction  which  had  met 
the  first.  There  would  be  no  summation  of  effects, 
no  complication.  However  numerous  the  succes- 
sive impressions  might  come  to  be,  each  would 
remain  fresh  and  pure,  the  last  being  identical  in 
character  with  the  first.  One,  one,  one,  would  be 
the  monotonous  response  for  ever.    Just  so  gen- 


DISCOVERY    OF    NATURAL    OBJECTS       69 

erations  of  ephemeral  insects  that  succeeded  one 
another  without  transmitting  experience  might 
repeat  the  same  round  of  impressions — an  ever- 
lasting progression  without  a  shadow  of  progress. 
Such,  too,  is  the  idiofs  life:  his  liquid  brain 
transmits  every  impulse  without  resistance  and 
retains  the  record  of  no  impression. 

Intelligence  is  accordingly  conditioned  by  a 
modification  of  both  structure  and  consciousness 
by  dint  of  past  events.  To  be  aware  that  a 
second  stroke  is  not  itself  the  first,  I  must  retain 
something  of  the  old  sensation.  The  first  must 
reverberate  still  in  my  ears  when  the  second  ar- 
rives, so  that  this  second,  coming  into  a  conscious- 
ness still  filled  by  the  first,  is  a  different  experi- 
ence from  the  first,  which  fell  into  a  mind 
perfectly  empty  and  unprepared.  Now  the  new- 
comer finds  in  the  subsisting  One  a  sponsor  to 
christen  it  by  the  name  of  Two.  The  first  stroke 
was  a  simple  1.  The  second  is  not  simply  another 
1,  a  mere  iteration  of  the  first.  It  is  V,  where 
the  coefiicient  represents  the  reverberating  first 
stroke,  still  persisting  in  the  mind,  and  forming  a 
background  and  perspective  against  which  the  new 
stroke  may  be  distinguished.  The  meaning  of 
"  two,"  then,  is  "  this  after  that "  or  "  this  again," 
where  we  have  a  simultaneous  sense  of  two  things 
which  have  been  separately  perceived  but  are  iden- 
tified as  similar  in  their  nature.  Repetition  must 
cease  to  be  pure  repetition  and  become  cumulative 
before  it  can  give  rise  to  the  consciousness  of 
repetition. 


70  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

The  first  condition  of  counting,  then,  is  that 
the  sensorium  should  retain  something  of  the  fiirst 
impression  while  it  receives  the  second,  or  (to 
state  the  corresponding  mental  fact)  that  the  sec- 
ond sensation  should  be  felt  together  with  a  sur- 
vival of  the  first  from  which  it  is  distinguished  in 
point  of  existence  and  with  which  it  is  identified 
in  point  of  character. 

Now,  to  secure  this,  it  is  not  enough 
No  identical     ^j^^^  ^^^   sensorium   should   be   mate- 

agent  needed. 

rially  continuous,  or  that  a  "  spiritual 
substance  "  or  a  "  transcendental  ego  "  should  per- 
sist in  time  to  receive  the  second  sensation  after 
having  received  and  registered  the  first.  A  per- 
fectly elastic  sensorium,  a  wholly  unchanging  soul, 
or  a  quite  absolute  ego  might  remain  perfectly 
identical  with  itself  through  various  experiences 
without  collating  them.  It  would  then  remain, 
in  fact,  more  truly  and  literally  identical  than  if 
it  were  modified  somewhat  by  those  successive 
shocks.  Yet  a  sensorium  or  a  spirit  thus  un- 
changed would  be  incapable  of  memory,  unfit  to 
connect  a  past  perception  with  one  present  or  to 
become  aware  of  their  relation.  It  is  not  identity 
in  the  substance  impressed,  but  growing  compli- 
cation in  the  phenomenon  presented,  that  makes 
possible  a  sense  of  diversity  and  relation  between 
things.  The  identity  of  substance  or  spirit,  if  it 
w^ere  absolute,  would  indeed  prevent  comparison, 
because  it  would  exclude  modifications,  and  it  is 
the  survival  of  past  modifications  within  the  pres- 


DISCOVERY    OF    NATURAL    OBJECTS       71 

ent  that  makes  comparisons  possible.  We  may 
impress  any  number  of  forms  successively  on  the 
same  water,  and  the  identity  of  the  substance  will 
not  help  those  forms  to  survive  and  accumulate 
their  effects.  But  if  we  have  a  surface  that  retains 
our  successive  stampings  we  may  change  the  sub- 
stance from  wax  to  plaster  and  from  plaster  to 
bronze,  and  the  effects  of  our  labour  will  survive 
and  be  superimposed  upon  one  another.  It  is  the 
actual  plastic  form  in  both  mind  and  body,  not 
any  unchanging  substance  or  agent,  that  is  effi- 
cacious in  perpetuating  thought  and  gathering 
experience. 

Were  not  Nature  and  all  her  parts  such  models 
of  patience  and  pertinacity,  they  never  would  have 
succeeded  in  impressing  their  existence  on  some- 
thing so  volatile  and  irresponsible  as  thought  is. 
Example  of  ^  sensation  needs  to  be  violent,  like 
the  sun.  the  sun's  blinding  light,  to  arrest  at- 

tention, and  keep  it  taut,  as  it  were,  long  enough 
for  the  system  to  acquire  a  respectful  attitude,  and 
grow  predisposed  to  resume  it.  A  repetition  of 
that  sensation  will  thereafter  meet  with  a  pre- 
pared response  which  we  call  recognition ;  the  con- 
comitants of  the  old  experience  will  form  them- 
selves afresh  about  the  new  one  and  by  their 
convergence  give  it  a  sort  of  welcome  and  inter- 
pretation. The  movement,  for  instance,  by  which 
the  face  was  raised  toward  the  heavens  was  perhaps 
one  element  which  added  to  the  first  sensation, 
brightness,  a  concomitant  sensation,  height;  the 


72  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

brightness  was  not  bright  merely,  but  high.  Now 
when  the  brightness  reappears  the  face  will  more 
quickly  be  lifted  up;  the  place  where  the  bright- 
ness shone  will  be  looked  for;  the  brightness  will 
have  acquired  a  claim  to  be  placed  somewhere. 
The  heat  which  at  the  same  moment  may  have 
burned  the  forehead  will  also  be  expected  and, 
when  felt,  projected  into  the  brightness,  which  will 
now  be  hot  as  well  as  high.  So  with  whatever 
other  sensations  time  may  associate  with  this 
group.  They  will  all  adhere  to  the  original  im- 
pression, enriching  it  with  an  individuality  which 
will  render  it  before  long  a  familiar  complex  in 
experience,  and  one  easy  to  recognise  and  to  com- 
plete in  idea. 

In  the  case  of  so  vivid  a  thing  as 
hivediv^t  ^^^  sun's  brightness  many  other  sensa- 
tions beside  those  out  of  which  science 
draws  the  qualities  attributed  to  that  heavenly 
body  adhere  in  the  primitive  mind  to  the  phenom- 
enon. Before  he  is  a  substance  the  sun  is  a  god. 
He  is  beneficent  and  necessary  no  less  than  bright 
and  high;  he  rises  upon  all  happy  opportunities 
and  sets  upon  all  terrors.  He  is  divine,  since  all 
life  and  fruitfulness  hang  upon  his  miraculous 
revolutions.  His  coming  and  going  are  life  and 
death  to  the  world.  As  the  sensations  of  light  and 
heat  are  projected  upward  together  to  become 
attributes  of  his  body,  so  the  feelings  of  pleasure, 
safety,  and  hope  which  he  brings  into  the  soul  are 
projected  ipto  bis  spirit;  and  to  this  spirit,  moro 


DISCOVERY    OF    NATUKAL    OBJECTS        73 

than  to  anything  else,  energy,  independence,  and 
substantiality  are  originally  attributed.  The 
emotions  felt  in  his  presence  being  the  ultimate 
issue  and  term  of  his  effect  in  us,  the  counterpart 
or  shadow  of  those  emotions  is  regarded  as  the 
first  and  deepest  factor  in  his  causality.  It  is  his 
divine  life,  more  than  aught  else,  that  underlies 
his  apparitions  and  explains  the  influences  which 
he  propagates.  The  substance  or  independent  ex- 
istence attributed  to  objects  is  therefore  by  no 
means  only  or  primarily  a  physical  notion.  What 
is  conceived  to  support  the  physical  qualities  is  a 
pseudo-psychic  or  vital  force.  It  is  a  moral  and 
living  object  that  we  construct,  building  it  up  out 
of  all  the  materials,  emotional,  intellectual,  and 
sensuous,  which  lie  at  hand  in  our  consciousness 
to  be  synthesised  into  the  hybrid  reality  which  we 
are  to  fancy  confronting  us.  To  discriminate  and 
redistribute  those  miscellaneous  physical  and  psy- 
chical elements,  and  to  divorce  the  god  from  the 
material  sun,  is  a  much  later  problem,  arising  at 
a  different  and  more  reflective  stage  in  the  Life 
of  Eeason. 

When  reflection,  turning  to  the  com- 

Causes  and  _  . 

essences  prchcnsion    of    a    chaotic    experience, 

contrasted.  busics  itsclf  about  recurrences,  when  it 
seeks  to  normalise  in  some  way  things  coming  and 
going,  and  to  straighten  out  the  causes  of  events, 
that  reflection  is  inevitably  turned  toward  some- 
thing dynamic  and  independent,  and  can  have  no 
successful    issue    except    in    mechanical    science. 


74  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

When  on  the  other  hand  reflection  stops  to  chal- 
lenge and  question  the  fleeting  object,  not  so  much 
to  prepare  for  its  possible  return  as  to  conceive  its 
present  nature,  this  reflection  is  turned  no  less 
unmistakably  in  the  direction  of  ideas,  and  will 
terminate  in  logic  or  the  morphology  of  being. 
We  attribute  independence  to  things  in  order  to 
normalise  their  recurrence.  We  attribute  essences 
to  them  in  order  to  normalise  their  manifesta- 
tions or  constitution.  Independence  will  ulti- 
mately turn  out  to  be  an  assumed  constancy  in 
material  processes,  essence  an  assumed  constancy 
in  ideal  meanings  or  points  of  reference  in  dis- 
course. The  one  marks  the  systematic  distribution 
of  objects,  the  other  their  settled  character. 
Voracity  of  ^^^  ^alk  of  recurrent  perceptions,  but 

inteUect.  materially    considered    no    perception 

recurs.  Each  recurrence  is  one  of  a  finite  series 
and  holds  for  ever  its  place  and  number  in  that 
series.  Yet  human  attention,  while  it  can  survey 
several  simultaneous  impressions  and  find  them 
similar,  cannot  keep  them  distinct  if  they  grow 
too  numerous.  The  mind  has  a  native  bias  and 
inveterate  preference  for  form  and  identification. 
Water  does  not  run  down  hill  more  persistently 
than  attention  turns  experience  into  constant 
terms.  The  several  repetitions  of  one  essence 
given  in  consciousness  will  tend  at  once  to  be  neg- 
lected, and  only  the  essence  itself — the  character 
shared  by  those  sundry  perceptions — will  stand 
and  become  a  term  in  mental  discourse.     After 


DISCOVERY    OF    NATURAL    OBJECTS       75 

a  few  strokes  of  the  clock,  the  reiterated  impres- 
sions merge  and  cover  one  another;  we  lose  count 
and  perceive  the  quality  and  rhythm  but  not  the 
number  of  the  sounds.  If  this  is  true  of  so 
abstract  and  mathematical  a  perception  as  is  count- 
ing, how  emphatically  true  must  it  be  of  con- 
tinuous and  infinitely  varied  perceptions  flowing 
in  from  the  whole  spatial  world.  Glimpses  of  the 
environment  follow  one  another  in  quick  succes- 
sion, like  a  regiment  of  soldiers  in  uniform;  only 
now  and  then  does  the  stream  take  a  new  turn, 
catch  a  new  ray  of  sunlight,  or  arrest  our  atten- 
tion at  some  break. 

The  senses  in  their  natural  play  revert  con- 
stantly to  familiar  objects,  gaining  impressions 
which  differ  but  slightly  from  one  another.  These 
slight  differences  are  submerged  in  apperception, 
so  that  sensation  comes  to  be  not  so  much  an  addi- 
tion of  new  items  to  consciousness  as  a  reburnish- 
ing  there  of  some  imbedded  device.  Its  character 
and  relations  are  only  slightly  modified  at  each 
fresh  rejuvenation.  To  catch  the  passing  phe- 
nomenon in  all  its  novelty  and  idiosyncrasy  is  a 
work  of  artifice  and  curiosity.  Such  an  exercise 
does  violence  to  intellectual  instinct  and  involves 
an  aesthetic  power  of  diving  bodily  into  the  stream 
of  sensation,  having  thrown  overboard  all  rational 
ballast  and  escaped  at  once  the  inertia  and  the 
momentum  of  practical  life.  Normally  every 
datum  of  sense  is  at  once  devoured  by  a  hungry 
intellect  and  digested  for  the  sake  of  its  vital 


76  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

juices.  The  result  is  that  what  ordinarily  re- 
mains in  memory  is  no  representative  of  particu- 
lar moments  or  shocks — though  sensation,  as  in 
dreams,  may  be  incidentally  recreated  from  within 
— but  rather  a  logical  possession,  a  sense  of  ac- 
quaintance with  a  certain  field  of  reality,  in  a 
word,  a  consciousness  of  Tcnowledge. 

But  what,  we  may  ask,  is  this  real- 
Can  the  '  J  ' 

transcendent  ity,  which  WB  boast  to  kuow  ?  May  not 
be  known?  ||^g  sccptic  justly  Contend  that  nothing 
is  so  unknown  and  indeed  unknowable  as  this  pre- 
tended object  of  knowledge?  The  sensations 
which  reason  treats  so  cavalierly  were  at  least 
something  actual  while  they  lasted  and  made  good 
their  momentary  claim  to  our  interest;  but  what 
is  this  new  ideal  figment,  unseizable  yet  ever 
present,  invisible  but  indispensable,  unknowable 
yet  alone  interesting  or  important  ?  Strange  that 
the  only  possible  object  or  theme  of  our  knowledge 
should  be  something  we  cannot  know. 
_    ^.    .  An  answer  to  these  doubts  will  per- 

Can  the  im-  ^ 

mediate  be  haps  appear  if  we  ask  ourselves  what 
°**°*''  sort  of  contact  with  reality  would  sat- 

isfy us,  and  in  what  terms  we  expect  or  desire  to 
possess  the  subject-matter  of  our  thoughts.  Is  it 
simply  corroboration  that  we  look  for?  Is  it  a 
verification  of  truth  in  sense?  It  would  be  un- 
reasonable, in  that  case,  after  all  the  evidence  we 
demand  has  been  gathered,  to  complain  that  the 
ideal  term  thus  concurrently  suggested,  the  super- 
sensible substance,  reality,  or  independent  object. 


DISCOVERY    OF.  NATURAL    OBJECTS        77 

does  not  itself  descend  into  the  arena  of  immediate 
sensuous  presentation.  Knowledge  is  not  eating, 
and  we  cannot  expect  to  devour  and  possess  what 
we  mean.  Knowledge  is  recognition  of  some- 
thing absent;  it  is  a  salutation,  not  an  embrace. 
It  is  an  advance  on  sensation  precisely  because  it 
is  representative.  The  terms  or  goals  of  thought 
have  for  their  function  to  subtend  long  tracts  of 
sensuous  experience,  to  be  ideal  links  between  fact 
and  fact,  invisible  wires  behind  the  scenes,  threads 
along  which  inference  may  run  in  making  phe- 
nomena intelligible  and  controllable.  An  idea 
that  should  become  an  image  would  cease  to  be 
ideal ;  a  principle  that  is  to  remain  a  principle  can 
never  become  a  fact.  A  God  that  you  could  see 
with  the  eyes  of  the  body,  a  heaven  you  might 
climb  into  by  a  ladder  planted  at  Bethel,  would 
be  parts  of  this  created  and  interpretable  world, 
not  terms  in  its  interpretation  nor  objects  in  a 
spiritual  sphere.  Now  external  objects  are 
thought  to  be  principles  and  sources  of  experi- 
ence; they  are  accordingly  conceived  realities  on 
an  ideal  plane.  We  may  look  for  all  the  evidence 
we  choose  before  we  declare  our  inference  to  be 
warranted;  but  we  must  not  ask  for  something 
more  than  evidence,  nor  expect  to  know  realities 
without  inferring  them  anew.  They  are  revealed 
only  to  understanding.  We  cannot  cease  to  think 
and  still  continue  to  know. 

It  may  be  said,  however,  that  principles  and 
external  objects  are  interesting  only  because  they 


78  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

symbolise  further  sensations,  that  thought  is  an 
expedient  of  finite  minds,  and  that  representation 
Is  thought  a  is  a  ghostlj  process  which  we  crave 
bridge   from   ^^   materialise  into  bodily   possession. 

sensation  to  ^      x- 

sensation?  We  may  grow  sick  of  inferring  truth 
and  long  rather  to  become  reality.  Intelligence 
is  after  all  no  compulsory  possession;  and  while 
some  of  us  would  gladly  have  more  of  it,  others 
find  that  they  already  have  too  much.  The  ten- 
sion of  thought  distresses  them  and  to  represent 
what  they  cannot  and  would  not  be  is  not  a 
natural  function  of  their  spirit.  To  such  minds 
experience  that  should  merely  corroborate  ideas 
would  prolong  dissatisfaction.  The  ideas  must  be 
realised;  they  must  pass  into  immediacy.  If  real- 
ity (a  word  employed  generally  in  a  eulogistic 
sense)  is  to  mean  this  desired  immediacy,  no  ideal 
of  thought  can  be  real.  All  intelligible  objects 
and  the  whole  universe  of  mental  discourse  would 
then  be  an  unreal  and  conventional  structure,  im- 
pinging ultimately  on  sense  from  which  it  would 
derive  its  sole  validity. 

There  would  be  no  need  of  quarrelling  with 
such  a  philosophy,  were  not  its  use  of  words  rather 
misleading.  Call  experience  in  its  existential  and 
immediate  aspect,  if  you  will,  the  sole  reality ;  that 
will  not  prevent  reality  from  having  an  ideal 
dimension.  The  intellectual  world  will  continue 
to  give  beauty,  meaning,  and  scope  to  those  bub- 
bles of  consciousness  on  which  it  is  painted.  Real- 
ity would  not  be,  in  that  case,  what  thought  aspires 


DISCOVERY    OF    NATURAL    OBJECTS       79 

io  reach.  Consciousness  is  the  least  ideal  of  things 
when  reason  is  taken  out  of  it,  Keality  would  then 
need  thought  to  give  it  all  those  human  values  of 
which,  in  its  substance,  it  would  have  been  wholly 
deprived;  and  the  ideal  would  still  be  what  lent 
music  to  throbs  and  significance  to  being. 

The  equivocation  favoured  by  such  language  at 
once  begins  to  appear.  Is  not  thought  with  all 
its  products  a  part  of  experience?  Must  not 
sense,  if  it  be  the  only  reality,  be  sentient  some- 
times of  the  ideal  ?  What  the  site  is  to  a  city  that  is 
immediate  experience  to  the  universe  of  discourse. 
The  latter  is  all  held  materially  within  the  lim- 
its defined  by  the  former;  but  if  immediate  ex- 
perience be  the  seat  of  the  moral  world,  the  moral 
world  is  the  only  interesting  possession  of  imme- 
diate experience.  "When  a  waste  is  built  on,  how- 
ever, it  is  a  violent  paradox  to  call  it  still  a  waste ; 
and  an  immediate  experience  that  represents  the 
rest  of  sentience,  with  all  manner  of  ideal  har- 
monies read  into  the  whole  in  the  act  of  repre- 
senting it,  is  an  immediate  experience  raised  to 
its  highest  power:  it  is  the  Life  of  Eeason.  In 
vain,  then,  will  a  philosophy  of  intel- 
naturauter  Icctual  abstention  limit  so  Platonic  a 
piatomca.  ^^^^^  ^g  reality  to  the  immediate  aspect 
of  existence,  when  it  is  the  ideal  aspect  that  en- 
dows existence  with  character  and  value,  together 
with  representative  scope  and  a  certain  lien  upon 
eternity. 

More  legitimate,  therefore,  would  be  the  asser- 


80  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

tion  that  knowledge  reaches  reality  when  it  touches 
its  ideal  goal.  Reality  is  known  when,  as  in 
mathematics,  a  stable  and  unequivocal  object  is 
developed  by  thinking.  The  locus  or  material 
embodiment  of  such  a  reality  is  no  longer  in  view ; 
these  questions  seem  to  the  logician  irrelevant.  If 
necessary  ideas  find  no  illustration  in  sense,  he 
deems  the  fact  an  argument  against  the  impor- 
tance and  validity  of  sensation,  not  in  the  least  a 
disproof  of  his  ideal  knowledge.  If  no  site  be 
found  on  earth  for  the  Platonic  city,  its  consti- 
tution is  none  the  less  recorded  and  enshrined  in 
heaven;  nor  is  that  the  only  true  ideal  that  has 
not  where  to  lay  its  head.  What  in  the  sensualis- 
tic  or  mystical  system  was  called  reality  will  now 
be  termed  appearance,  and  what  there  figured  as 
an  imaginary  construction  borne  by  the  conscious 
moment  will  now  appear  to  be  a  prototype  for  all 
existence  and  an  eternal  standard  for  its  estima- 
tion. 

It  is  this  rationalistic  or  Platonic  system  (lit- 
tle as  most  men  may  suspect  the  fact)  that  finds 
a  first  expression  in  ordinary  perception.  When 
you  distinguish  your  sensations  from  their  cause 
and  laugh  at  the  idealist  (as  this  kind  of  sceptic 
is  called)  who  says  that  chairs  and  tables  exist 
only  in  your  mind,  you  are  treating  a  figment  of 
reason  as  a  deeper  and  truer  thing  than  the 
moments  of  life  whose  blind  experience  that  reason 
has  come  to  illumine.  What  you  call  the  evidence 
of  sense  is  pure  confidence  in  reason.     You  will 


DISCOVERY    OF    NATURAL    OBJECTS       81 

not  be  so  idiotic  as  to  make  no  inferences  from 
your  sensations;  you  will  not  pin  your  faith  so 
unimaginatively  on  momentary  appearance  as  to 
deny  that  the  world  exists  when  you  stop  thinking 
about  it.  You  feel  that  your  intellect  has  wider 
scope  and  has  discovered  many  a  thing  that  goes 
on  behind  the  scenes,  many  a  secret  that  would 
escape  a  stupid  and  gaping  observation.  It  is  the 
fool  that  looks  to  look  and  stops  at  the  barely 
visible :  you  not  only  look  but  see;  for  you  under- 
stand. 

Identity  and  Now  the  practical  burden  of  such 
independence   understanding,  if  you  take  the  trouble 

predicated  of  "•'         •' 

things.  to  analyse  it,  will  turn  out  to  be  what 

the  sceptic  says  it  is:  assurance  of  eventual  sen- 
sations. But  as  these  sensations,  in  memory  and 
expectation,  are  numerous  and  indefinitely  vari- 
able, you  are  not  able  to  hold  them  clearly  before 
the  mind ;  indeed,  the  realisation  of  all  the  poten- 
tialities which  you  vaguely  feel  to  lie  in  the  future 
is  a  task  absolutely  beyond  imagination.  Yet 
your  present  impressions,  dependent  as  they  are 
on  your  chance  attitude  and  disposition  and  on  a 
thousand  trivial  accidents,  are  far  from  repre- 
senting adequately  all  that  might  be  discovered 
or  that  is  actually  known  about  the  object  before 
you.  This  object,  then,  to  your  apprehension,  is 
not  identical  with  any  of  the  sensations  that  re- 
veal it,  nor  is  it  exhausted  by  all  these  sensations 
when  they  are  added  together;  yet  it  contains 
nothing  assignable  but  what  they  might  conceiv- 
VoL.  I.— 6 


82  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

ably  reveal.  As  it  lies  in  your  fancy,  then,  this 
object,  the  reality,  is  a  complex  and  elusive  entity, 
the  sum  at  once  and  the  residuum  of  all  particu- 
lar impressions  which,  underlying  the  present  one, 
have  bequeathed  to  it  their  surviving  linkage  in 
discourse  and  consequently  endowed  it  with  a 
large  part  of  its  present  character.  With  this 
hybrid  object,  sensuous  in  its  materials  and  ideal 
in  its  locus,  each  particular  glimpse  is  compared, 
and  is  recognised  to  be  but  a  glimpse,  an  aspect 
which  the  object  presents  to  a  particular  observer. 
Here  are  two  identifications.  In  the  first  place 
various  sensations  and  felt  relations,  which  can- 
not be  kept  distinct  in  the  mind,  fall  together  into 
one  term  of  discourse,  represented  by  a  sign,  a 
word,  or  a  more  or  less  complete  sensuous  image. 
In  the  second  place  the  new  perception  is  referred 
to  that  ideal  entity  of  which  it  is  now  called  a 
manifestation  and  effect. 

Such  are  the  primary  relations  of  reality  and 
appearance.  A  reality  is  a  term  of  discourse  based 
on  a  psychic  complex  of  memories,  associations, 
and  expectations,  but  constituted  in  its  ideal  in- 
dependence by  the  assertive  energy  of  thought. 
An  appearance  is  a  passing  sensation,  recognised 
as  belonging  to  that  group  of  which  the  object 
itself  is  the  ideal  representative,  and  accordingly 
regarded  as  a  manifestation  of  that  object. 

Thus  the  notion  of  an  independent  and  per- 
manent world  is  an  ideal  term  used  to  mark  and 
as  it  were  to  justify  the  cohesion  in  space  and  the 


DISCOVERY    OF    NATURAL    OBJECTS       83 

recurrence  in  time  of  recognisable  groups  of  sen- 
sations. This  coherence  and  recurrence  force  the 
intellect,  if  it  would  master  experience  at  all  or 
understand  anything,  to  frame  the  idea  of  such  a 
reality.  If  we  wish  to  defend  the  use  of  such  an 
idea  and  prove  to  ourselves  its  necessity,  all  we 
need  do  is  to  point  to  that  coherence  and  recur- 
rence in  external  phenomena.  That  brave  effort 
and  flight  of  intelligence  which  in  the  beginning 
raised  man  to  the  conception  of  reality,  enabling 
him  to  discount  and  interpret  appearance,  will,  if 
we  retain  our  trust  in  reason,  raise  us  continually 
anew  to  that  same  idea,  by  a  no  less  spontaneous 
and  victorious  movement  of  thought. 


CHAPTEE    IV 

ON   SOME   CRITICS   OF   THIS  DISCOVERY 

Psychology  The  English  psychologists  who  first 

as  a  solvent,  disintegrated  the  idea  of  substance, 
and  whose  traces  we  have  in  general  followed  in 
the  above  account,  did  not  study  the  question 
wholly  for  its  own  sake  or  in  the  spirit  of  a  science 
that  aims  at  nothing  but -a-historical  analysis  of 
mind.  They  had  a  more  or  less  malicious  pur- 
pose behind  their  psychology.  They  thought  that 
if  they  could  once  show  how  metaphysical  ideas 
are  made  they  would  discredit  those  ideas  and 
banish  them  for  ever  from  the  world.  If  they 
retained  confidence  in  any  notion — as  Hobbes  in 
body,  Locke  in  matter  and  in  God,  Berkeley  in 
spirits,  and  Kant,  the  inheritor  of  this  malicious 
psychology,  in  the  thing-in-itself  and  in  heaven — 
it  was  merely  by  inadvertence  or  want  of  courage. 
The  principle  of  their  reasoning,  where  they  chose 
to  apply  it,  was  always  this,  that  ideas  whose 
materials  could  all  be  accounted  for  in  conscious- 
ness and  referred  to  sense  or  to  the  operations  of 
mind  were  thereby  exhausted  and  deprived  of  fur- 
ther validity.  Only  the  unaccountable,  or  rather 
the  uncriticised,  could  be  true.  Consequently  the 
84 


ON    SOME    CRITICS  85 

advance  of  psychology  meant,  in  this  school,  the 
retreat  of  reason;  for  as  one  notion  after  another 
was  clarified  and  reduced  to  its  elements  it  was 
ipso  facto  deprived  of  its  function. 

So  far  were  these  philosophers  from  conceiving 
that  validity  and  truth  are  ideal  relations,  accruing 
to  ideas  by  virtue  of  dialectic  and  use,  that  while  on 
the  one  hand  they  pointed  out  vital  affinities  and 
pragmatic  sanctions  in  the  mind's  economy  they 
confessed  on  the  other  that  the  outcome  of  their 
philosophy  was  sceptical;  for  no  idea  could  be 
found  in  the  mind  which  was  not  a  phenomenon 
there,  and  no  inference  could  be  drawn  from  these 
phenomena  not  based  on  some  inherent  "tendency 
to  feign."  The  analysis  which  was  in  truth  legiti- 
mising and  purifying  knowledge  seemed  to  them 
absolutely  to  blast  it,  and  the  closer  they  came  to 
the  bed-rock  of  experience  the  more  incapable  they 
felt  of  building  up  anything  upon  it.  Self- 
knowledge  meant,  they  fancied,  self-detection ;  the 
representative  value  of  thought  decreased  as 
thought  grew  in  scope  and  elaboration.  It  became 
impossible  to  be  at  once  quite  serious  and  quite 
intelligent ;  for  to  use  reason  was  to  indulge  in 
subjective  fiction,  while  conscientiously  to  abstain 
from  using  it  was  to  sink  back  upon  inarticulate 
and  brutish  instinct. 

In  Hume  this  sophistication  was  frankly 
avowed.  Philosophy  discredited  itself;  but  a  man 
of  parts,  who  loved  intellectual  games  even  better 
than  backgammon;  might  take  a  hand  with  the 


86  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

wits  and  historians  of  his  day,  until  the  clock 
struck  twelve  and  the  party  was  over.  Even 
in  Kant,  though  the  mood  was  more  cramped  and 
earnest,  the  mystical  sophistication  was  quite  the 
same.  Kant,  too,  imagined  that  the  bottom  had 
been  knocked  out  of  the  world ;  that  in  comparison 
with  some  unutterable  sort  of  truth  empirical 
truth  was  falsehood,  and  that  validity  for  all  pos- 
sible experience  was  weak  validity,  in  comparison 
with  validity  of  some  other  and  unmentionable 
sort.  Since  space  and  time  could  not  repel  the 
accusation  of  being  the  necessary  forms  of  percep- 
tion, space  and  time  were  not  to  be  much  thought 
of;  and  when  the  sad  truth  was  disclosed  that 
causality  and  the  categories  were  instruments  by 
which  the  idea  of  nature  had  to  be  constructed,  if 
such  an  idea  was  to  exist  at  all,  then  nature  and 
causality  shrivelled  up  and  were  dishonoured 
together;  so  that,  the  soul's  occupation  being 
gone,  she  must  needs  appeal  to  some  mysterious 
oracle,  some  abstract  and  irrelevant  omen  within 
the  breast,  and  muster  up  all  the  stern  courage 
of  an  accepted  despair  to  carry  her  through  this 
world  of  mathematical  illusion  into  some  green 
and  infantile  paradise  beyond. 

.  ^  What  idea,  we  may  well  ask  our- 
role  of  intern-  sclvcs,  did  these  modern  philosophers 
gence.  entertain  regarding  the  pretensions  of 

ancient  and  mediaeval  metaphysics  ?  What  under- 
standing had  they  of  the  spirit  in  which  the 
natural  organs  of  reason  had  been  exercised  and 


ON   SOME   CKITICS  87 

developed  in  those  schools?  Frankly,  very  little; 
for  they  accepted  from  ancient  philosophy  and 
from  common-sense  the  distinction  between  reality 
and  appearance,  but  they  forgot  the  function  of 
that  distinction -and  dislocated  its  meaning,  which 
was  nothing  but  to  translate  the  chaos  of  percep- 
tion into  the  regular  play  of  stable  natures  and 
objects  congenial  to  discursive  thought  and  valid 
in  the  art  of  living.  Philosophy  had  been  the 
natural  science  of  perception  raised  to  the  reflec- 
tive plane,  the  objects  maintaining  themselves  on 
this  higher  plane  being  styled  realities,  and  those 
still  floundering  below  it  being  called  appearances 
or  mere  ideas.  The  function  of  envisaging  real- 
ity, ever  since  Parmenides  and  Heraclitus,  had 
been  universally  attributed  to  the  intellect.  When 
the  moderns,  therefore,  proved  anew  that  it  was  the 
mind  that  framed  that  idea,  and  that  what  we  call 
reality,  substance,  nature,  or  God,  can  be  reached 
only  by  an  operation  of  reason,  they  made  no  very 
novel  or  damaging  discovery. 

Of  course,  it  is  possible  to  disregard  the  sugges- 
tions of  reason  in  any  particular  case  and  it  is  quite 
possible  to  believe,  for  instance,  that  the  hypothesis 
of  an  external  material  world  is  an  erroneous  one. 
But  that  this  hypothesis  is  erroneous  does  not  fol- 
low from  the  fact  that  it  is  a  hypothesis.  To  discard 
it  on  that  ground  would  be  to  discard  all  reasoned 
knowledge  and  to  deny  altogether  the  validity  of 
thought.  If  intelligence  is  assumed  to  be  an  or- 
gan of  cognition  and  a  vehicle  for  truth,  a  given 


88  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

hypothesis  about  the  causes  of  perception  can  only 
be  discarded  when  a  better  hypothesis  on  the  same 
subject  has  been  supplied.  To  be  better  such  a 
hypothesis  would  have  to  meet  the  multiplicity  of 
phenomena  and  their  mutations  with  a  more  intel- 
ligible scheme  of  comprehension  and  a  more  useful 
instrument  of  control. 

All  criticism  Scepticism  is  always  possible  while 
dogmatic.  jt  is  partial.  It  will  remain  the  privi- 
lege and  resource  of  a  free  mind  that  has  elas- 
ticity enough  to  disintegrate  its  own  formations 
and  to  approach  its  experience  from  a  variety  of 
sides  and  with  more  than  a  single  method.  But 
the  method  chosen  must  be  coherent  in  itself  and 
the  point  of  view  assumed  must  be  adhered  to 
during  that  survey;  so  that  whatever  reconstruc- 
tion the  novel  view  may  produce  in  science  will 
be  science  still,  and  will  involve  assumptions  and 
dogmas  which  must  challenge  comparison  with 
the  dogmas  and  assumptions  they  would  supplant. 
People  speak  of  dogmatism  as  if  it  were  a  method 
to  be  altogether  outgrown  and  something  for  which 
some  non-assertive  philosophy  could  furnish  a  sub- 
stitute. But  dogmatism  is  merely  a  matter  of 
degree.  Some  thinkers  and  some  systems  retreat 
further  than  others  into  the  stratum  beneath  cur- 
rent conventions  and  make  us  more  conscious  of 
the  complex  machinery  which,  working  silently  in 
the  soul,  makes  possible  all  the  rapid  and  facile 
operations  of  reason.  The  deeper  this  retrospec- 
tive glance  the  less  dogmatic  the  philosophy.     A 


ON   SOME   CRITICS  89 

primordial  constitution  or  tendency,  however,  must 
always  remain,  having  structure  and  involving  a 
definite  life;  for  if  we  thought  to  reach  some 
wholly  vacant  and  indeterminate  point  of  origin, 
we  should  have  reached  something  wholly  impotent 
and  indifferent,  a  blank  pregnant  with  nothing 
that  we  wished  to  explain  or  that  actual  experi- 
ence presented.  When,  starting  with  the  inevi- 
table preformation  and  constitutional  bias,  we 
sought  to  build  up  a  simpler  and  nobler  edifice  of 
thought,  to  be  a  palace  and  fortress  rather  than  a 
prison  for  experience,  our  critical  philosophy 
would  still  be  dogmatic,  since  it  would  be  built 
upon  inexplicable  but  actual  data  by  a  process  of 
inference  underived  but  inevitable. 
A  choice  of  ^0  doubt  Aristotlc  and  the  scholas- 

hypotheses.  tics  Were  oftcu  Uncritical.  They  were 
too  intent  on  building  up  and  buttressing  their 
system  on  the  broad  human  or  religious  founda- 
tions which  they  had  chosen  for  it.  They  nursed 
the  comfortable  conviction  that  whatever  their 
thought  contained  was  eternal  and  objective  truth, 
a  copy  of  the  divine  intellect  or  of  the  world's  intel- 
ligible structure.  A  sceptic  may  easily  deride  that 
confidence  of  theirs;  their  system  may  have  been 
their  system  and  nothing  more.  But  the  way  to 
proceed  if  we  wish  to  turn  our  shrewd  suspicions 
and  our  sense  of  insecurity  into  an  articulate  con- 
viction and  to  prove  that  they  erred,  is  to  build 
another  system,  a  more  modest  one,  perhaps,  which 
will  grow  more  spontaneously  and  inevitably  in 


90  THE   LIFE    OF   KEASON 

the  mind  out  of  the  data  of  experience.  Obviously 
the  rival  and  critical  theory  will  make  the  same 
tacit  claim  as  the  other  to  absolute  validit3^  If 
all  our  ideas  and  perceptions  conspire  to  reinforce 
the  new  hypothesis,  this  will  become  inevitable 
and  necessary  to  us.  We  shall  then  condemn  the 
other  hypothesis,  not  indeed  for  having  been  a 
hypothesis,  which  is  the  common  fate  of  all 
rational  and  interpretative  thought,  but  for  having 
been  a  hypothesis  artificial,  misleading,  and  false; 
one  not  following  necessarily  nor  intelligibly  out 
of  the  facts,  nor  leading  to  a  satisfactory  reaction 
upon  them,  either  in  contemplation  or  in  practice. 
^  .,.    ..  Now  this  is  in  truth  exactly  the  con- 

Cntics  dis-  '' 

guised  enthu-  victiou  which  those  malicious  psycholo- 
siasts.  gjg^g  gecj-etly  harboured.    Their  critical 

scruples  and  transcendental  qualms  covered  a 
robust  rebellion  against  being  fooled  by  authority. 
They  rose  to  abate  abuses  among  which,  as 
Hobbes  said,  "the  frequency  of  insignificant  speech 
is  one."  Their  psychology  was  not  merely  a 
cathartic,  but  a  gospel.  Their  young  criticism  was 
sent  into  the  world  to  make  straight  the  path  of 
a  new  positivism,  as  now,  in  its  old  age,  it  is  in- 
voked to  keep  open  the  door  to  superstition.  Some 
of  those  reformers,  like  Hobbes  and  Locke,  had  at 
heart  the  interests  of  a  physical  and  political 
mechanism,  which  they  wished  to  substitute  for 
the  cumbrous  and  irritating  constraints  of  tradi- 
tion. Their  criticism  stopped  at  the  frontiers  of 
their  practical  discontent ;  they  did  not  care  to  ask 


ON   SOME   CKITICS  91 

how  the  belief  in  matter,  space,  motion,  God,  or 
whatever  else  still  retained  their  allegiance,  could 
withstand  the  kind  of  psychology  which,  as  they 
conceived,  had  done  away  with  individual  essences 
and  nominal  powers.  Berkeley,  whose  interests 
lay  in  a  different  quarter,  used  the  same  critical 
method  in  support  of  a  different  dogmatism; 
armed  with  the  traditional  pietistic  theory  of 
Providence  he  undertook  with  a  light  heart  to 
demolish  the  whole  edifice  which  reason  and  sci- 
ence had  built  upon  spatial  perception.  He 
wished  the  lay  intellect  to  revert  to  a  pious  idiocy 
in  the  presence  of  Nature,  lest  consideration  of  her 
history  and  laws  should  breed  "  mathematical 
atheists  " ;  and  the  outer  world  being  thus  reduced 
to  a  sensuous  dream  and  to  the  blur  of  immediate 
feeling,  intelligence  and  practical  faith  would  be 
more  unremittingly  employed  upon  Christian 
mythology.  Men  would  be  bound  to  it  by  a  neces- 
sary allegiance,  there  being  no  longer  any  rival 
object  left  for  serious  or  intelligent  consideration. 
The  psychological  analysis  on  which  these  par- 
tial or  total  negations  were  founded  was  in  a  gen- 
eral way  admirable ;  the  necessary  artifices  to  which 
it  had  recourse  in  distinguishing  simple  and  com- 
plex ideas,  principles  of  association  and  inference, 
were  nothing  but  premonitions  of  what  a  physio- 
logical psychology  would  do  in  referring  the  men- 
tal process  to  its  organic  and  external  supports; 
for  experience  has  no  other  divisions  than  those 
it  creates  in  itself   by   distinguishing   its   objects 


92  THE   LIFE    OF    KEASON 

and  its  organs.  Reference  to  external  conditions, 
though  seldom  explicit  in  these  writers,  who 
imagined  they  could  appeal  to  an  introspection 
not  revealing  the  external  world,  was  pervasive  in 
them ;  as,  for  instance,  where  Hume  made  his  fun- 
damental distinction  between  impressions  and 
ideas,  where  the  discrimination  was  based  nomi- 
nally on  relative  vividness  and  priority  in  time,  but 
really  on  causation  respectively  by  outer  objects  or 
by  spontaneous  processes  in  the  brain. 
„      .  Hume  it  was  who  carried  this  psy- 

Hume's  .  ,  ... 

gratuitous  chological  analysis  to  its  goal,  giving  it 
scepticism.  greater  simplicity  and  universal  scope; 
and  he  had  also  the  further  advantage  of  not 
nursing  any  metaphysical  changeling  of  his  own 
to  substitute  for  the  legitimate  offspring  of  human 
understanding.  His  curiosity  was  purer  and  his 
scepticism  more  impartial,  so  that  he  laid  bare  the 
natural  habits  and  necessary  fictions  of  thought 
with  singular  lucidity,  and  sufficient  accuracy  for 
general  purposes.  But  the  malice  of  a  psychology 
intended  as  a  weapon  against  superstition  here 
recoils  on  science  itself.  Hume,  like  Berkeley, 
was  extremely  young,  scarce  five-and-twenty,  when 
he  Vrote  his  most  incisive  work ;  he  was  not  ready 
to  propose  in  theory  that  test  of  ideas  by  their 
utility  which  in  practice  he  and  the  whole  English 
school  have  instinctively  adopted.  An  ulterior 
test  of  validity  would  not  have  seemed  to  him  sat- 
isfactory, for  though  inclined  to  rebellion  and 
positivism  he  was  still  the  pupil  of  that  mythical 


ON    SOME    CRITICS  93 

philosophy  which  attributed  the  value  of  things 
to  their  origin  rather  than  to  their  uses,  because 
it  had  first,  in  its  parabolic  way,  erected  the  high- 
est good  into  a  First  Cause.  Still  breathing,  in 
spite  of  himself,  this  atmosphere  of  materialised 
Platonism,  Hume  could  not  discover  the  true 
origin  of  anything  without  imagining  that  he  had 
destroyed  its  value.  A  natural  child  meant  for 
him  an  illegitimate  one;  his  philosophy  had  not 
yet  reached  the  wisdom  of  that  French  lady  who 
asked  if  all  children  were  not  natural.  The  outcome 
of  his  psychology  and  criticism  seemed  accord- 
ingly to  be  an  inhibition  of  reason;  he  was  left 
free  to  choose  between  the  distractions  of  back- 
gammon and  "  sitting  down  in  a  forlorn  scepti- 
cism." 

In  his  first  youth,  while  disintegrating  reflec- 
tion still  overpowered  the  active  interests  of  his 
mind,  Hume  seems  to  have  had  some  moments  of 
genuine  suspense  and  doubt:  but  with  years  and 
prosperity  the  normal  habits  of  inference  which 
he  had  so  acutely  analysed  asserted  themselves 
in  his  own  person  and  he  yielded  to  the  "  tendency 
to  feign  "  so  far  at  least  as  to  believe  languidly  in 
the  histories  he  wrote,  the  compliments  he  re- 
ceived, and  the  succulent  dinners  he  devoured. 
There  is  a  kind  of  courtesy  in  scepticism.  It 
would  be  an  offence  against  polite  conventions  to 
press  our  doubts  too  far  and  question  the  per- 
manence of  our  estates,  our  neighbours'  independ- 
ent existence,  or  even  the  justification  of  a  good 


94  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

bishop's  faith  and  income.  Against  metaphysi- 
cians, and  even  against  bishops,  sarcasm  was  not 
without  its  savour;  but  the  line  must  be  drawn 
somewhere  by  a  gentleman  and  a  man  of  the 
world.  Hume  found  no  obstacle  in  his  specula- 
tions to  the  adoption  of  all  necessary  and  useful 
conceptions  in  the  sphere  to  which  he  limited  his 
mature  interests.  That  he  never  extended  this 
liberty  to  believe  into  more  speculative  and  com- 
prehensive regions  was  due  simply  to  a  voluntary 
superficiality  in  his  thought.  Had  he  been  inter- 
ested in  the  rationality  of  things  he  would  have 
laboured  to  discover  it,  as  he  laboured  to  discover 
that  historical  truth  or  that  political  utility  to 
which  his  interests  happened  to  attach. 
Kant'  b  ti-  Kant,  like  Berkeley,  had  a  private 
tutefor  mysticism  in  reserve  to  raise  upon  the 

knowledge.  r^jng  gf  scicuce  and  common-sense. 
Knowledge  was  to  be  removed  to  make  way  for 
faith.  This  task  is  ambiguous,  and  the  equivoca- 
tion involved  in  it  is  perhaps  the  deepest  of  those 
confusions  with  which  German  metaphysics  has 
since  struggled,  and  which  have  made  it  waver 
between  the  deepest  introspection  and  the  dreari- 
est mythology.  To  substitute  faith  for  knowl- 
edge might  mean  to  teach  the  intellect  humility, 
to  make  it  aware  of  its  theoretic  and  transitive 
function  as  a  faculty  for  hypothesis  and  rational 
fiction,  building  a  bridge  of  methodical  inferences 
and  ideal  unities  between  fact  and  fact,  between 
endeavour  and  satisfaction.    It  might  be  to  remind 


ON    SOME    CRITICS  96 

US,  sprinkling  over  us,  as  it  were,  the  Lenten 
ashes  of  an  intellectual  contrition,  that  our 
thoughts  are  air  even  as  our  bodies  are  dust, 
momentary  vehicles  and  products  of  an  immortal 
vitality  in  God  and  in  nature,  which  fosters  and 
illumines  us  for  a  moment  before  it  lapses  into 
other  forms. 

Had  Kant  proposed  to  humble  and  concen- 
trate into  a  practical  faith  the  same  natural  ideas 
which  had  previously  been  taken  for  absolute 
knowledge,  his  intention  would  have  been  inno- 
cent, his  conclusions  wise,  and  his  analysis  free 
from  venom  and  arriere-pensee.  Man,  because  of 
his  finite  and  propulsive  nature  and  because  he  is 
a  pilgrim  and  a  traveller  throughout  his  life,  is 
obliged  to  have  faith :  the  absent,  the  hidden,  the 
eventual,  is  the  necessary  object  of  his  concern. 
But  what  else  shall  his  faith  rest  in  except  in 
what  the  necessary  forms  of  his  perception  present 
to  him  and  what  the  indispensable  categories  of 
his  understanding  help  him  to  conceive?  What 
possible  objects  are  there  for  faith  except  objects 
of  a  possible  experience?  What  else  should  a 
practical  and  moral  philosophy  concern  itself 
with,  except  the  governance  and  betterment  of  the 
real  world  ?  It  is  surely  by  using  his  only  possible 
forms  of  perception  and  his  inevitable  categories 
of  understanding  that  man  may  yet  learn,  as  he 
has  partly  learned  already,  to  live  and  prosper  in 
the  universe.  Had  Kant's  criticism  amounted 
simply  to  such  a  confession  of  the  tentative,  prac- 
tical, and  hypothetical  nature  of  human  reason, 


96  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

it  would  have  been  wholly  acceptable  to  the  wise; 
and  its  appeal  to  faith  would  have  been  nothing 
but  an  expression  of  natural  vitality  and  courage, 
just  as  its  criticism  of  knowledge  would  have  been 
nothing  but  a  better  acquaintance  with  self.  This 
faith  would  have  called  the  forces  of  impulse  and 
passion  to  reason's  support,  not  to  its  betrayal. 
Faith  would  have  meant  faith  in  the  intellect,  a 
faith  naturally  expressing  man's  practical  and 
ideal  nature,  and  the  only  faith  yet  sanctioned  by 
its  fruits. 

False  Side  by  side  with  this  reinstatement 

subjectivity      q£    rcason,    howcvcr,    which    was    not 

attnbuted  ^  ' 

to  reason.  absent  f rom  Kant's  system  in  its  criti- 
cal phase  and  in  its  application  to  science,  there 
lurked  in  his  substitution  of  faith  for  knowledge 
another  and  sinister  intention.  He  wished  to 
blast  as  insignificant,  because  "  subjective,"  the 
whole  structure  of  human  intelligence,  with  all  the 
lessons  of  experience  and  all  the  triumphs  of 
human  skill,  and  to  attach  absolute  validity 
instead  to  certain  echoes  of  his  rigoristic  religious 
education.  These  notions  were  surely  just  as  sub- 
jective, and  far  more  local  and  transitory,  than  the 
common  machinery  of  thought ;  and  it  was  actually 
proclaimed  to  be  an  evidence  of  their  sublimity 
that  they  remained  entirely  without  practical  sanc- 
tion in  the  form  of  success  or  of  happiness.  The 
"  categorical  imperative  "  was  a  shadow  of  the  ten 
commandments;  the  postulates  of  practical  reason 
were  the  minimal   tenets   of  the   most  abstract 


ON   SOME   CRITICS  97 

Protestantism.  These  fossils,  found  unaccount- 
ably imbedded  in  the  old  man's  mind,  he  regarded 
as  the  evidences  of  an  inward  but  supernatural 
revelation. 

Chimerical  re-  O^ly  the  quaint  severity  of  Kant's 
construction,  education  and  character  can  make  in- 
telligible to  us  the  restraint  he  exercised  in  mak- 
ing supernatural  postulates.  All  he  asserted  was 
his  inscrutable  moral  imperative  and  a  God  to  re- 
ward with  the  pleasures  of  the  next  world  those 
who  had  been  Puritans  in  this.  But  the  same 
principle  could  obviously  be  applied  to  other  cher- 
ished imaginations :  there  is  no  superstition  which 
it  might  not  justify  in  the  eyes  of  men  accus- 
tomed to  see  in  that  superstition  the  sanction  of 
their  morality.  For  the  "practical"  proofs  of 
freedom,  immortalit}^,  and  Providence — of  which 
all  evidence  in  reason  or  experience  had  previously 
been  denied — exceed  in  perfunctory  sophistry  any- 
thing that  can  be  imagined.  Yet  this  lamentable 
epilogue  was  in  truth  the  guiding  thought  of  the 
whole  investigation.  Nature  had  been  proved  a 
figment  of  human  imagination  so  that,  once  rid  of 
all  but  a  mock  allegiance  to  her  facts  and  laws,  we 
might  be  free  to  invent  any  world  we  chose  and 
believe  it  to  be  absolutely  real  and  independent  of 
our  nature.  Strange  prepossession,  that  while 
part  of  human  life  and  mind  was  to  be  an  avenue 
to  reality  and  to  put  men  in  relation  to  external 
and  eternal  things,  the  whole  of  human  life  and 
mind  should  not  be  able  to  do  so !  Conceptions 
Vol.  L— 7 


98  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

rooted  in  the  very  elements  of  our  being,  in  ou? 
senses,  intellect,  and  imagination,  which  had 
shaped  themselves  through  many  generations 
under  a  constant  fire  of  observation  and  disillu- 
sion, these  were  to  be  called  subjective,  not  only 
in  the  sense  in  which  all  knowledge  must  obvi- 
ously be  so,  since  it  is  knowledge  that  someone 
possesses  and  has  gained,  but  subjective  in  a  dis- 
paraging sense,  and  in  contrast  to  some  better 
form  of  knowledge.  But  what  better  form  of 
knowledge  is  this  ?  If  it  be  a  knowledge  of  things 
as  they  really  are  and  not  as  they  appear,  we  must 
remember  that  reality  means  what  the  intellect 
infers  from  the  data  of  sense;  and  yet  the  prin- 
ciples of  such  inference,  by  which  the  distinction 
between  appearance  and  reality  is  first  instituted, 
are  precisely  the  principles  now  to  be  discarded 
as  subjective  and  of  merely  empirical  validity. 

"  Merely  empirical "  is  a  vicious  phrase :  what  is 
other  than  empirical  is  less  than  empirical,  and 
what  is  not  relative  to  eventual  experience  is 
something  given  only  in  present  fancy.  The  gods 
of  genuine  religion,  for  instance,  are  terms  in  a 
continual  experience:  the  pure  in  heart  may  see 
God.  If  the  better  and  less  subjective  principle 
be  said  to  be  the  moral  law,  we  must  remember 
that  the  moral  law  which  has  practical  importance 
and  true  dignity  deals  with  facts  and  forces  of 
the  natural  world,  that  it  expresses  interests  and 
aspirations  in  which  man's  fate  in  time  and  space, 
with  his  pains,  pleasures,  and  aU  other  empirical 


ON   SOME   CRITICS  99 

feelings,  is  concerned.  This  was  not  the  moral 
law  to  which  Kant  appealed,  for  this  is  a  part  of 
the  warp  and  woof  of  nature.  His  njoral  law  was 
a  personal  superstition,  irrelevant  to  the  impulse 
and  need  of  the  world.  His  notions  of  the  super- 
natural were  those  of  his  sect  and  generation,  and 
did  not  pass  to  his  more  influential  disciples: 
what  was  transmitted  was  simply  the  contempt  for 
sense  and  understanding  and  the  practice,  author- 
ised by  his  modest  example,  of  building  air-castles 
in  the  great  clearing  which  the  Critique  was  sup- 
posed to  have  made. 

It  is  noticeable  in  the  series  of  philosophers 
from  Hobbes  to  Kant  that  as  the  metaphysical 
residuum  diminished  the  critical  and  psychologi- 
cal machinery  increased  in  volume  and  value.  In 
Hol)bes  and  Locke,  with  the  beginnings  of  empiri- 
cal ps\Thology,  there  is  mixed  an  abstract  mate- 
rialism ;  in  Berkeley,  with  an  extension  of  analytic 
criticism,  a  popular  and  childlike  theology,  en- 
tirely without  rational  development;  in  Hume, 
with  a  completed  survey  of  human  habits  of  idea- 
tion, a  withdrawal  into  practical  conventions;  and 
in  Kant,  with  the  conception  of  the  creative  under- 
standing firmly  grasped  and  elaborately  worked 
out,  a  flight  from  the  natural  world  altogether. 
The  Critique  a  The  Critique,  in  spite  of  some  arti- 
workon  ficialitics  and  pedantries  in  arrange- 

architecture.  mcut,  presented  a  conception  never 
before  attained  of  the  rich  architecture  of  reason. 
It  revealed  the  intricate  organisation,  comparable 


100  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

to  that  of  the  body,  possessed  by  that  fine  web  of 
intentions  and  counter-intentions  whose  pulsations 
are  our  thoughts.  The  dynamic  logic  of  intelli- 
gence was  laid  bare,  and  the  hierarchy  of  ideas,  if 
not  always  correctly  traced,  was  at  least  mani- 
fested in  its  principle.  It  was  as  great  an  enlarge- 
ment of  Hume's  work  as  Hume's  had  been  of 
Locke's  or  Locke's  of  Hobbes's.  And  the  very 
fact  that  the  metaphysical  residuum  practically 
disappeared — for  the  weak  reconstruction  in  the 
second  Critique  may  be  dismissed  as  irrelevant 
— renders  the  work  essentially  valid,  essentially  a 
description  of  something  real.  It  is  therefore  a 
great  source  of  instruction  and  a  good  compen- 
dium or  store-house  for  the  problems  of  mind. 
But  the  work  has  been  much  overestimated.  It 
is  the  product  of  a  confused  though  laborious 
mind.  It  contains  contradictions  not  merely  in- 
cidental, such  as  any  great  novel  work  must  retain 
(since  no  man  can  at  once  remodel  his  whole 
vocabulary  and  opinions)  but  contradictions  abso- 
lutely fundamental  and  inexcusable,  like  that 
between  the  transcendental  function  of  intellect 
and  its  limited  authority,  or  that  between  the 
efficacy  of  things-in-themselves  and  their  un- 
knowability.  Kant's  assumptions  and  his  conclu- 
sions, his  superstitions  and  his  wisdom,  alternate 
without  neutralising  each  other. 

That  experience  is  a  product  of  two 

Incoherences.    •      .  .  , .  -■     i      tt-      > 

factors  IS  an  assumption  made  by  Kant. 
It  rests  on  a  psychological  analogy,  namely  on  the 


ON    SOME    CRITICS  101 

fact  that  organ  and  stimulus  are  both  necessary  to 
sensation.  That  experience  is  the  substance  or  mat- 
ter of  nature,  which  is  a  construction  in  thought, 
is  Kant's  conclusion,  based  on  intrinsic  logical 
analysis.  Here  experience  is  evidently  viewed  as 
something  uncaused  and  without  conditions,  being 
itself  the  source  and  condition  of  all  thinkable 
objects.  The  relation  between  the  transcen- 
dental function  of  experience  and  its  empirical 
causes  Kant  never  understood.  The  transcenden- 
talism which — if  we  have  it  at  all — must  be  fun- 
damental, he  made  derivative;  and  the  realism, 
which  must  then  be  derivative,  he  made  absolute. 
Therefore  his  metaphysics  remained  fabulous  and 
his  idealism  sceptical  or  malicious. 

Ask  what  can  be  meant  by  "  conditions  of  ex- 
perience "  and  Kant's  bewildering  puzzle  solves 
itself  at  the  word.  Condition,  like  cause,  is  a 
term  that  covers  a  confusion  between  dialectical 
and  natural  connections.  The  conditions  of  ex- 
perience, in  the  dialectical  sense,  are  the  charac- 
teristics a  thing  must  have  to  deserve  the  name  of 
experience;  in  other  words,  its  conditions  are  its 
nominal  essence.  If  experience  be  used  in  a  loose 
sense  to  mean  any  given  fact  or  consciousness  in 
general,  the  condition  of  experience  is  merely  im- 
mediacy. If  it  be  used,  as  it  often  is  in  empirical 
writers,  for  the  shock  of  sense,  its  conditions  are 
two :  a  sensitive  organ  and  an  object  capable  of 
stimulating  it.     If  finally  experience  be  given  its 


102  THE   LIFE    OF    REASON 

highest  and  most  pregnant  import  and  mean  a 
fund  of  knowledge  gathered  by  living,  the  condi- 
tion of  experience  is  intelligence.  Taking  the 
word  in  this  last  sense,  Kant  showed  in  a  confused 
but  essentially  conclusive  fashion  that  only  by  the 
application  of  categories  to  immediate  data  could 
knowledge  of  an  ordered  universe  arise;  or,  in 
other  language,  that  knowledge  is  a  vista,  that  it 
has  a  perspective,  since  it  is  the  presence  to  a 
given  thought  of  a  diffused  and  articulated  land- 
scape. The  categories  are  the  principles  of  inter- 
pretation by  which  the  flat  datum  acquires  this 
perspective  in  thought  and  becomes  representa- 
tive of  a  whole  system  of  successive  or  collateral 
existences. 

The  circumstance  that  experience,  in  the  second 
sense,  is  a  term  reserved  for  what  has  certain 
natural  conditions,  namely,  for  the  spark  flying 
from  the  contact  of  stimulus  and  organ,  led  Kant 
to  shift  his  point  of  view,  and  to  talk  half  the  time 
about  conditions  in  the  sense  of  natural  causes  or 
needful  antecedents.  Intelligence  is  not  an  ante- 
cedent of  thought  and  knowledge  but  their  char- 
acter and  logical  energy.  Synthesis  is  not  a 
natural  but  only  a  dialectical  condition  of  preg- 
nant experience;  it  does  not  introduce  such  ex- 
perience but  constitutes  it.  Nevertheless,  the 
whole  skeleton  and  dialectical  mould  of  experi- 
ence came  to  figure,  in  Kant's  mythology,  as 
machinery  behind  the  scenes,  as  a  system  of  non- 
natural  efficient  forces,  as  a  partner  in  a  marriage 


ON    SOME    CRITICS  103 

the  issue  of  which  was  human  thought.  The  idea 
could  thus  suggest  itself — favoured  also  by  remem- 
bering inopportunely  the  actual  psychological 
situation — that  all  experience,  in  every  sense  of  the 
word,  had  supernatural  antecedents,  and  that  the 
dialectical  conditions  of  experience,  in  the  highest 
sense,  were  efficient  conditions  of  experience  in 
the  lowest. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  observe  that  absolute 
experience  can  have  no  natural  conditions.  Ex- 
istence in  the  abstract  can  have  no  cause;  for 
every  real  condition  would  have  to  be  a  factor  in 
absolute  experience,  and  every  cause  would  be 
something  existent.  Of  course  there  is  a  modest 
and  non-exhaustive  experience — that  is,  any  par- 
ticular sensation,  thought,  or  life — which  it  would 
be  preposterous  to  deny  was  subject  to  natural 
conditions.  Saint  Lawrence's  experience  of  being 
roasted,  for  instance,  had  conditions;  some  of 
them  were  the  fire,  the  decree  of  the  court,  and  his 
own  stalwart  Christianity.  But  these  conditions 
are  other  parts  or  objects  of  conceivable  experi- 
ence which,  as  we  have  learned,  fall  into  a  system 
with  the  part  we  say  they  condition.  In  our  grop- 
ing  and  inferential  thought  one  part 
true  system  may  become  a  ground  for  expecting  or 
of  conditions,  supposing  the  other.  Nature  is  then 
the  sum  total  of  its  own  conditions;  the  whole 
object,  tbe  parts  observed  pliis  the  parts  interpo- 
lated, is  the  self-existent  fact.  The  mind,  in  its 
empirical  flux,  is  a  part  of  this  complex ;  to  say  it 


104  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

is  its  own  condition  or  that  of  the  other  objects 
is  a  grotesque  falsehood.  A  babe's  casual  sensa- 
tion of  light  is  a  condition  neither  of  his  own 
existence  nor  of  his  mother's.  The  true  condi- 
tions are  those  other  parts  of  the  world  without 
which,  as  we  find  by  experience,  sensations  of 
light  do  not  appear. 

Had  Kant  been  trained  in  a  better  school  of  phi- 
losophy he  might  have  felt  that  the  phrase  "subject- 
ive conditions  "  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  When 
we  find  ourselves  compelled  to  go  behind  the  actual 
and  imagine  something  antecedent  or  latent  to 
pave  the  way  for  it,  we  are  ipso  facto  conceiving 
the  potential,  that  is,  the  "  objective  "  world.  All 
antecedents,  by  transcendental  necessity,  are  there- 
fore objective  and  all  conditions  natural.  An 
imagined  potentiality  that  holds  together  the  epi- 
sodes which  are  actual  in  consciousness  is  the  very 
definition  of  an  object  or  thing.  Nature  is  the 
sum  total  of  things  potentially  observable,  some 
observed  actually,  others  interpolated  hypotheti- 
cally ;  and  common-sense  is  right  as  against  Kant's 
subjectivism  in  regarding  nature  as  the  condition 
of  mind  and  not  mind  as  the  condition  of  nature. 
This  is  not  to  say  that  experience  and  feeling  are 
not  the  only  given  existence,  from  which  the  mate- 
rial part  of  nature,  something  essentially  dynamic 
and  potential,  must  be  intelligently  inferred.  But 
are  not  "  conditions  "  inferred  ?  .  Are  they  not,  in 
their  deepest  essence,  potentialities  and  powers? 
Kant's  fabled  conditions  also  are  inferred;  but 


ON   SOME   CRITICS  105 

they  are  inferred  illegitimately  since  the  "  sub- 
jective "  ones  are  dialectical  characters  turned  into 
antecedents,  while  the  thing-in-itself  is  a  natural 
object  without  a  natural  function.  Experience 
alone  being  given,  it  is  the  ground  from  which  its 
conditions  are  inferred:  its  conditions,  therefore, 
are  empirical.  The  secondary  position  of  nature 
goes  with  the  secondary  position  of  all  causes, 
objects,  conditions,  and  ideals.  To  have  made  the 
conditions  of  experience  metaphysical,  and  prior 
in  the  order  of  knowledge  to  experience  itself,  was 
simply  a  piece  of  surviving  Platonism.  The  form 
was  hypostasised  into  an  agent,  and  mythical 
machinery  was  imagined  to  impress  that  form  on 
whatever  happened  to  have  it. 

All  this  was  opposed  to  Kant's  own  discovery 
and  to  his  critical  doctrine  which  showed  that  the 
world  (which  is  the  complex  of  those  conditions 
which  experience  assigns  to  itself  as  it  develops 
and  progresses  in  knowledge)  is  not  before  experi- 
ence in  the  order  of  knowledge,  but  after  it.  His 
fundamental  oversight  and  contradiction  lay  in 
not  seeing  that  the  concept  of  a  set  of  conditions 
was  the  precise  and  exact  concept  of  nature,  which 
he  consequently  reduplicated,  having  one  nature 
before  experience  and  another  after.  The  first 
thus  became  mythical  and  the  second  illusory :  for 
the  first,  said  to  condition  experience,  was  a  set 
of  verbal  ghosts,  while  the  second,  which  alone 
could  be  observed  or  discovered  scientifically,  was 
declared  fictitious.     The  truth  is  that  the  single 


106  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

nature  or  set  of  conditions  for  experience  which 
the  intellect  constructs  is  the  object  of  our 
thoughts  and  perceptions  ideally  completed.  This 
is  neither  mythical  nor  illusory.  It  is,  strictly 
speaking,  in  its  system  and  in  many  of  its  parts, 
hypothetical ;  but  the  hypothesis  is  absolutely  safe. 
At  whatever  point  we  test  it,  we  find  the  experi- 
ence we  expect,  and  the  inferences  thence  made 
by  the  intellect  are  verified  in  sense  at  every 
moment  of  existence. 
._^.^  .  ,  The  ambiguity  in  Kant's  doctrine 

Artificial  .  . 

pathos  in  sub-  makcs  him  a  confusing  representative 
jectivism.  q£  ^-^^^  criticism  of  perception  which 
malicious  psychology  has  to  offer.  When  the  mind 
has  made  its  great  discovery;  when  it  has  recog- 
nised independent  objects,  and  thus  taken  a  first 
step  in  its  rational  life,  we  need  to  know  unequivo- 
cally whether  this  step  is  a  false  or  a  true  one.  If 
it  be  false,  reason  is  itself  misleading,  since  a 
hypothesis  indispensable  in  the  intellectual  mas- 
tery of  experience  is  a  false  hypothesis  and  the 
detail  of  experience  has  no  substructure.  Now 
Kant's  answer  was  that  the  discovery  of  objects 
was  a  true  and  valid  discovery  in  the  field  of  ex- 
perience; there  were,  scientifically  speaking, 
causes  for  perception  which  could  be  inferred  from 
perception  by  thought.  But  this  inference  was 
not  true  absolutely  or  metaphysically  because  there 
was  a  real  world  beyond  possible  experience,  and 
there  were  oracles,  not  intellectual,  by  which 
knowledge  of  that  unrealisable  world  might  be  ob- 


ox    SOME    CRITICS  107 

tained.  This  mysticism  undid  the  intellectualism 
which  characterised  Kant's  system  in  its  scientific 
and  empirical  application;  so  that  the  justifica- 
tion for  the  use  of  such  categories  as  that  of  cause 
and  substance  (categories  by  which  the  idea  of 
reality  is  constituted)  was  invalidated  by  the 
counter-assertion  that  empirical  reality  was  not 
true  reality  but,  being  an  object  reached  by  infer- 
ential thought,  was  merely  an  idea.  Nor  was  the 
true  reality  appearance  itself  in  its  crude  imme- 
diacy, as  sceptics  would  think;  it  was  a  realm  of 
objects  present  to  a  supposed  intuitive  thought, 
that  is,  to  a  non-inferential  inference  or  non-dis- 
cursive discourse. 

So  that  while  Kant  insisted  on  the  point,  which 
hardly  needed  pressing,  that  it  is  mind  that  dis- 
covers empirical  reality  by  making  inferences 
from  the  data  of  sense,  he  admitted  at  the  same 
time  that  such  use  of  understanding  is  legitimate 
and  even  necessary,  and  that  the  idea  of  nature 
so  framed  has  empirical  truth.  There  remained, 
however,  a  sense  that  this  empirical  truth  was 
somehow  insufficient  and  illusory.  Understand- 
ing was  a  superficial  faculty,  and  we  might  by 
other  and  oracular  methods  arrive  at  a  reality  that 
was  not  empirical.  Why  any  reality — such  as 
God,  for  instance — should  not  be  just  as  empirical 
as  the  other  side  of  the  moon,  if  experience  sug- 
gested it  and  reason  discovered  it,  or  why,  if  not 
suggested  by  experience  and  discovered  by  reason, 
anything  should  be  called  a  reality  at  all  or  should 


108  THE    LIFE    OF    SEASON 

hold  for  a  moment  a  man's  waking  attention — that 
is  what  Kant  never  tells  us  and  never  himself 
knew. 

Clearer  upon  this  question  of  perception  is  the 
position  of  Berkeley;  we  may  therefore  take  him 
as  a  fair  representative  of  those  critics  who  seek 
to  invalidate  the  discovery  of  material  objects. 

Our  ideas,  said  Berkeley,  were  in  our  minds; 
the  material  world  was  patched  together  out  of 
our  ideas;  it  therefore  existed  only  in  our  minds. 
To  the  suggestion  that  the  idea  of  the  external 
world  is  of  course  in  our  minds,  but  that  our 
minds  have  constructed  it  by  treating  sensations 
as  effects  of  a  permanent  substance  distributed  in 
a  permanent  space,  he  would  reply  that  this  means 
nothing,  bcause  "  substance,"  "  permanence,"  and 
"  space  "  are  non-existent  ideas,  i.e.,  they  are  not 
images  in  sense.  They  might,  however,  be 
"  notions  "  like  that  of  "  spirit,"  which  Berkeley 
ingenuously  admitted  into  his  system,  to  be,  mys- 
teriously  enough,  that  which  has  ideas, 
algebra  of  Or  they  might  be  (what  would  do  just 
perception.       ^g  ^g||  £qj.  ^^^^  purposc)  that  which  he 

elsewhere  called  them,  algebraic  signs  used  to  fa- 
cilitate the  operations  of  thought.  This  is,  indeed, 
what  they  are,  if  we  take  the  word  algebraic  in 
a  loose  enough  sense.  They  are  like  algebraic 
signs  in  being,  in  respect  of  their  object  or  sig- 
nification, not  concrete  images  but  terms  in  a  men- 
tal process,  elements  in  a  method  of  inference. 
Why,  then,  denounce  them?    They  could  be  used 


ON    SOME    CRITICS  109 

with  all  confidence  to  lead  us  back  to  the  concrete 
values  for  which  they  stood  and  to  the  relations 
which  they  enabled  us  to  state  and  discover.  Ex- 
perience would  thus  be  furnished  with  an  intel- 
ligible structure  and  articulation,  and  a  psycho- 
logical analysis  would  be  made  of  knowledge  into 
its  sensuous  material  and  its  ideal  objects.  What, 
then,  was  Berkeley's  objection  to  these  algebraic 
methods  of  inference  and  to  the  notions  of  space, 
matter,  independent  existence,  and  efficient  cau- 
sality which  these  methods  involve? 
Horror  of  What   liG   abhorred   was  the   belief 

physics.  that  such  methods  of  interpreting  ex- 

perience were  ultimate  and  truly  valid,  and  that 
by  thinking  after  the  fashion  of  "  mathematical 
atheists  "  we  could  understand  experience  as  well 
as  it  can  be  understood.  If  the  flux  of  ideas  had 
no  other  key  to  it  than  that  system  of  associations 
and  algebraic  substitutions  which  is  called  the 
natural  world  we  should  indeed  know  just  as  well 
what  to  expect  in  practice  and  should  receive  the 
same  education  in  perception  and  reflection;  but 
what  difference  would  there  be  between  such  an 
idealist  and  the  most  pestilential  materialist,  save 
his  even  greater  wariness  and  scepticism  ?  Berke- 
ley at  this  time — long  before  days  of  "  Siris  "  and 
tar-water — was  too  ignorant  and  hasty  to  under- 
stand how  inane  all  spiritual  or  poetic  ideals  would 
be  did  they  not  express  man's  tragic  dependence 
on  nature  and  his  congruous  development  in  her 
bosom.     He  lived  in  an  age  when  the  study  and 


110  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

dominion  of  external  things  no  longer  served 
directly  spiritual  uses.  The  middle-men  had  ap- 
peared, those  spirits  in  whom  the  pursuit  of  the 
true  and  the  practical  never  leads  to  possession  of 
the  good,  but  loses  itself,  like  a  river  in  sand,  amid 
irrational  habits  and  passions.  He  was  accord- 
ingly repelled  by  whatever  philosophy  was  in  him, 
no  less  than  by  his  religious  prejudices,  from  sub- 
mergence in  external  interests,  and  he  could  see 
no  better  way  of  vindicating  the  supremacy  of 
moral  goods  than  to  deny  the  reality  of  matter, 
the  finality  of  science,  and  the  constructive  powers 
of  reason  altogether.  With  honest  English  em- 
piricism he  saw  that  science  had  nothing  absolute 
or  sacrosanct  about  it,  and  rightly  placed  the  value 
of  theory  in  its  humane  uses ;  but  the  complement- 
ary truth  escaped  him  altogether  that  only  the  free 
and  contemplative  expression  of  reason,  of  which 
science  is  a  chief  part,  can  render  anything  else 
humane,  useful,  or  practical.  He  was  accordingly 
a  party  man  in  philosophy,  where  partisanship  is 
treason,  and  opposed  the  work  of  reason  in  the 
theoretical  field,  hoping  thus  to  advance  it  in  the 
moral. 

Of  the  moral  field  he  had,  it  need  hardly  be 
added,  a  quite  childish  and  perfunctory  concep- 
Pueriutyin  ^io^i-  There  the  prayer-book  and  the 
morals.  catechism  could  solve  every  problem. 

He  lacked  the  feeling,  possessed  by  all  large  and 
mature  minds,  that  there  would  be  no  intelligi- 
bility or  value  in  things  divine  were  they  not  inter- 


ON    SOME   CRITICS  111 

pretations  and  sublimations  of  things  natural. 
To  master  the  real  world  was  an  ancient  and  not 
too  promising  ambition:  it  suited  his  youthful 
radicalism  better  to  exorcise  or  to  cajole  it.  He 
sought  to  refresh  the  world  with  a  water-spout  of 
idealism,  as  if  to  change  the  names  of  things  could 
change  their  values.  Away  with  all  arid  investi- 
gation, away  with  the  cold  algebra  of  sense  and 
reason,  and  let  us  have  instead  a  direct  conversa- 
tion with  heaven,  an  unclouded  vision  of  the  pur- 
poses and  goodness  of  God;  as  if  there  were  any 
other  way  of  understanding  the  sources  of  human 
happiness  than  to  study  the  ways  of  nature  and 
man. 

Converse  with  God  has  been  the  life  of  many 
a  wiser  and  sadder  philosopher  than  Berkeley; 
but  they,  like  Plato,  for  instance,  or  Spinoza, 
have  made  experience  the  subject  as  well  as 
the  language  of  that  intercourse,  and  have  thus 
given  the  divine  revelation  some  degree  of  perti- 
nence and  articulation.  Berkeley  in  his  positive 
doctrine  was  satisfied  with  the  vaguest  generali- 
ties; he  made  no  effort  to  find  out  how  the  con- 
sciousness that  God  is  the  direct  author  of  our 
incidental  perceptions  is  to  help  us  to  deal  with 
them ;  what  other  insights  and  principles  are  to  be 
substituted  for  those  that  disclose  the  economy  of 
nature;  how  the  moral  difficulties  incident  to  an 
absolute  providentialism  are  to  be  met,  or  how  the 
existence  and  influence  of  fellow-minds  is  to  be 
defended.     So  that  to  a  piety  inspired  by  con- 


112  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

ventional  theology  and  a  psychology  that  refused 
to  pass,  except  grudgingly  and  unintelligently, 
beyond  the  sensuous  stratum,  Berkeley  had  noth- 
ing to  add  by  way  of  philosophy.  An  insignifi- 
cant repetition  of  the  truism  that  ideas  are  all 
"  in  the  mind  "  constituted  his  total  wisdom.  To 
be  was  to  be  perceived.  That  was  the  great  maxim 
by  virtue  of  which  we  were  asked,  if  not  to  refrain 
from  conceiving  nature  at  all,  which  was  perhaps 
impossible  at  so  late  a  stage  in  human  develop- 
ment, at  least  to  refrain  from  regarding  our  neces- 
sary thoughts  on  nature  as  true  or  rational.  In- 
telligence was  but  a  false  method  of  imagination 
by  which  God  trained  us  in  action  and  thought; 
for  it  was  apparently  impossible  to  endow  us  with 
a  true  method  that  would  serve  that  end.  And 
what  shall  we  think  of  the  critical  acumen  or  prac- 
tical wisdom  of  a  philosopher  who  dreamed  of 
some  other  criterion  of  truth  than  necessary  impli- 
cation in  thought  and  action? 
Truism  and  ^^  the  melodramatic  fashion  so  com- 
sophism.  mon  in  what  is  called  philosophy  we 
may  delight  ourselves  with  such  flashes  of  light- 
ning as  this:  esse  est  percipi.  The  truth  of  this 
paradox  lies  in  the  fact  that  through  perception 
alone  can  we  get  at  being — a  modest  and  familiar 
notion  which  makes,  as  Plato's  "  Theaetetus"  shows, 
not  a  bad  point  of  departure  for  a  serious  theory  of 
knowledge.  The  sophistical  intent  of  it,  however, 
is  to  deny  our  right  to  make  a  distinction  which 
in  fact  we  do  make  and  which  the  speaker  him- 


ON   SOME   CRITICS  113 

self  is  making  as  he  utters  the  phrase;  for  he 
would  not  be  so  proud  of  himself  if  he  thought 
he  was  thundering  a  tautology.  If  a  thing  were 
never  perceived,  or  inferred  from  perception,  we 
should  indeed  never  know  that  it  existed ;  but  once 
perceived  or  inferred  it  may  be  more  conducive  to 
comprehension  and  practical  competence  to  regard 
it  as  existing  independently  of  our  perception; 
and  our  ability  to  make  this  supposition  is  reg- 
istered in  the  difference  between  the  two  words 
to  he  and  to  he  perceived — words  which  are  by  no 
means  synonymous  but  designate  two  very  differ- 
ent relations  of  things  in  thought.  Such  idealism 
at  one  fell  swoop,  through  a  collapse  of  assertive 
intellect  and  a  withdrawal  of  reason  into  self-con- 
sciousness, has  the  puzzling  character  of  any  clever 
pun,  that  suspends  the  fancy  between  two  incom- 
patible but  irresistible  meanings.  The  art  of  such 
sophistry  is  to  choose  for  an  axiom  some  ambigu- 
ous phrase  which  taken  in  one  sense  is  a  truism 
and  taken  in  another  is  an  absurdity;  and  then, 
by  showing  the  truth  of  that  truism,  to  give  out 
that  the  absurdity  has  also  been  proved.  It  is  a 
truism  to  say  that  I  am  the  only  seat  or  locus  of 
my  ideas,  and  that  whatever  I  know  is  known  by 
me;  it  is  an  absurdity  to  say  that  I  am  the  only 
object  of  my  thought  and  perception. 
ReaUtyis  To  confuse  the  instrument  with  its 

the  practi-       function   and  the   operation   with   its 

cal  made  '- 

inteUigibie.      meaning  has  been  a  persistent  foible  in 
modern  philosophy.     It  could  thus  come  about 
Vol.  I.— 8 


114  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

that  the  function  of  intelligence  should  be 
altogether  misconceived  and  in  consequence  de- 
nied, when  it  was  discovered  that  figments  of  rea- 
son could  never  become  elements  of  sense  but 
must  always  remain,  as  of  course  they  should, 
ideal  and  regulative  objects,  and  therefore  objects 
to  which  a  practical  and  energetic  intellect  will 
tend  to  give  the  name  of  realities.  Matter  is  a 
reality  to  the  practical  intellect  because  it  is  a 
necessary  and  ideal  term  in  the  mastery  of  experi- 
ence; while  negligible  sensations,  like  dreams,  are 
called  illusions  by  the  same  authority  because, 
though  actual  enough  while  they  last,  they  have 
no  sustained  function  and  no  right  to  practical 
dominion. 

Let  us  imagine  Berkeley  addressing  himself  to 
that  infant  or  animal  consciousness  which  first 
used  the  category  of  substance  and  passed  from 
its  perceptions  to  the  notion  of  an  independent 
thing.  "  Beware,  my  child,"  he  would  have  said, 
"  you  are  taking  a  dangerous  step,  one  which  may 
hereafter  produce  a  multitude  of  mathematical 
atheists,  not  to  speak  of  cloisterfuls  of  scholastic 
triflers.  Your  ideas  can  exist  only  in  your  mind ; 
if  you  suffer  yourself  to  imagine  them  materialised 
in  mid-air  and  subsisting  when  you  do  not  per- 
ceive them,  you  will  commit  a  great  impiety.  If 
you  unthinkingly  believe  that  when  you  shut  your 
eyes  the  world  continues  to  exist  until  you  open 
them  again,  you  will  inevitably  be  hurried  into  an 
infinity  of  metaphysical  quibbles  about  the  discrete 


ON    SOME    CKITICS  115 

and  the  continuous,  and  you  will  be  so  bewildered 
and  deafened  by  perpetual  controversies  that  the 
clear  light  of  the  gospel  will  be  extinguished  in 
your  soul."  "  But,"  that  tender  Peripatetic  might 
answer,  "I  cannot  forget  the  things  about  me  when 
I  shut  my  eyes :  I  know  and  almost  feel  their  per- 
sistent presence,  and  I  always  find  them  again, 
upon  trial,  just  as  they  were  before,  or  just  in 
that  condition  to  which  the  operation  of  natural 
causes  would  have  brought  them  in  my  absence. 
If  I  believe  they  remain  and  suffer  steady  and 
imperceptible  transformation,  I  know  what  to 
expect,  and  the  event  does  not  deceive  me;  but 
if  I  had  to  resolve  upon  action  before  knowing 
whether  the  conditions  for  action  were  to  exist 
or  no,  I  should  never  understand  what  sort  of  a 
world  I  lived  in." 

"Ah,  my  child,"  the  good  Bishop  would  reply, 
"  you  misunderstand  me.  You  may  indeed,  nay, 
you  must,  live  and  think  as  if  everything  remained 
independently  real.  That  is  part  of  your  education 
for  heaven,  which  God  in  his  goodness  provides  for 
you  in  this  life.  He  will  send  into  your  soul  at 
every  moment  the  impressions  needed  to  verify 
your  necessary  hypotheses  and  support  your  hum- 
ble and  prudent  expectations.  Only  you  must 
not  attribute  that  constancy  to  the  things  them- 
selves which  is  due  to  steadfastness  in  the  designs 
of  Providence.  Think  and  act  as  if  a  material 
world  existed,  but  do  not  for  a  moment  believe  it 
to  exist." 


116  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

Vain  "  reaii-  With  this  advice,  coming  reasaur- 
ties"and        inglv    from    the    combined    forces    of 

trustworthy  »  J 

"fictions."  scepticism  and  religion,  we  may  leave 
the  embryonic  mind  to  its  own  devices,  satisfied 
that  even  according  to  the  most  malicious 
psychologists  its  first  step  toward  the  comprehen- 
sion of  experience  is  one  it  may  congratulate  itself 
on  having  taken  and  which,  for  the  present  at 
least,  it  is  not  called  upon  to  retrace.  The  Life 
of  Reason  is  not  concerned  with  speculation  about 
unthinkable  and  gratuitous  "  realities  " ;  it  seeks 
merely  to  attain  those  conceptions  which  are  nec- 
essary and  appropriate  to  man  in  his  acting  and 
thinking.  The  first  among  these,  underlying  all 
arts  and  philosophies  alike,  is  the  indispensable 
conception  of  permanent  external  objects,  forming 
in  their  congeries,  shifts,  and  secret  animation  the 
system  and  life  of  nature. 

Note — There  is  a  larger  question  raised  by  Berkeley's 
arguments  which  I  have  not  attempted  to  discuss  here, 
namely,  whether  knowledge  is  possible  at  all,  and  whether 
any  mental  representation  can  be  supposed  to  inform  us 
about  anything.  Berkeley  of  course  assumed  this  power  in 
that  he  continued  to  believe  in  God,  in  other  spirits,  in  the 
continuity  of  experience,  and  in  its  discoverable  laws.  His 
objection  to  material  objects,  therefore,  could  not  consist- 
ently be  that  they  are  objects  of  knowledge  rather  than 
absolute  feelings,  exhausted  by  their  momentary  possession 
in  consciousness.  It  could  only  be  that  they  are  unthink- 
able and  invalid  objects,  in  which  the  materials  of  sense  are 
given  a  mode  of  existence  inconsistent  with  their  nature. 
But  if  the  only  criticism  to  which  material  objects  were  ob- 
noxious were  a  dialectical  criticism,  such  as  that  contained 
in  Kant's  antiaomies,  the  royal  road  to  idealism  coveted  by 


ON    SOME    CRITICS  117 

Berkeley  would  bo  blocked ;  to  be  an  idea  in  the  mind 
would  not  involve  lack  of  cognitive  and  representative  value 
in  that  idea.  The  fact  that  material  objects  were  represented 
or  conceived  would  not  of  itself  prove  that  they  could  not 
have  a  real  existence.  It  would  be  necessary,  to  prove  their 
unreality,  to  study  their  nature  and  function  and  to  compare 
them  with  such  conceptions  as  those  of  Providence  and  a 
spirit-world  in  order  to  determine  their  relative  validity. 
Such  a  critical  comparison  would  have  augured  ill  for 
Berkeley's  prejudices  ;  what  Its  result  might  have  been  we 
can  see  in  Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason.  In  order  to 
escape  such  evil  omens  and  prevent  the  collapse  of  his 
mystical  paradoxes,  Berkeley  keeps  in  reserve  a  much 
more  insidious  weapon,  the  sceptical  doubt  as  to  the  repre- 
sentative character  of  anything  mental,  the  possible  illusive- 
ness  of  all  knowledge.  This  doubt  he  invokes  in  all  those 
turns  of  thought  and  phrase  in  which  he  suggests  that  if  an  idea 
is  in  the  mind  it  cannot  have  its  counterpart  elsewhere,  and 
that  a  given  cognition  exhausts  and  contains  its  object. 
There  are,  then,  two  separate  maxims  in  his  philosophy,  one 
held  consistently,  viz. ,  that  nothing  can  be  known  which  is 
different  in  character  or  nature  from  the  object  present  to 
the  thinking  mind ;  the  other,  held  incidentally  and  incon- 
sistently, since  it  is  destructive  of  all  predication  and  knowl- 
edge, viz.,  that  nothing  can  exist  beyond  the  mind  which  is 
similar  in  nature  or  character  to  the  "  ideas  "  within  it;  or, 
to  put  the  same  thing  in  other  words,  that  nothing  can  be  re- 
vealed by  an  idea  which  is  different  from  that  idea  in  point 
of  existence.  The  first  maxim  does  not  contradict  the  ex- 
istence of  external  objects  in  space;  the  second  contradicts 
every  conception  that  the  human  mind  can  ever  form,  the 
most  airy  no  less  than  the  grossest.  No  idealist  can  go  so 
far  as  to  deny  that  his  memory  represents  his  past  experience 
by  inward  similarity  and  conscious  intention,  or,  if  he  pre- 
fers this  language,  that  the  moments  or  aspects  of  the  divine 
mind  represent  one  another  and  their  general  system.  Else 
the  idealist's  philosophy  itself  would  be  an  insignificant  and 
momentary  illusion. 


CHAPTER   V 

NATURE  UNIFIED  AND  MIND  DISCERNED 

Man's  feeble         When  the  mind  has  learned  to  dis- 
grasp  of  tinguish  external   objects   and   to   at- 

tribute to  them  a  constant  size,  shape, 
and  potency,  in  spite  of  the  variety  and  intermit- 
tence  ruling  in  direct  experience,  there  yet  remains 
a  great  work  to  do  before  attaining  a  clear,  even 
if  superficial,  view  of  the  world.  An  animal's 
customary  habitat  may  have  constant  features  and 
their  relations  in  space  may  be  learned  by  con- 
tinuous exploration;  but  probably  many  other 
landscapes  are  also  within  the  range  of  memory 
and  fancy  that  stand  in  no  visible  relation  to  the 
place  in  which  we  find  ourselves  at  a  given 
moment.  It  is  true  that,  at  this  day,  we  take  it 
for  granted  that  all  real  places,  as  we  call  them, 
lie  in  one  space,  in  which  they  hold  definite  geo- 
metric relations  to  one  another;  and  if  we  have 
glimpses  of  any  region  for  which  no  room  can  be 
found  in  the  single  map  of  the  universe  which 
astronomy  has  drawn,  we  unhesitatingly  relegate 
that  region  to  the  land  of  dreams.  Since  the 
Elysian  Fields  and  the  Coast  of  Bohemia  have 
no  assignable  latitude  and  longitude,  we  call  these 
118 


NATURE    UNIFIED  119 

places  imaginary,  even  if  in  some  dream  we  re- 
member to  have  visited  them  and  dwelt  there  with 
no  less  sense  of  reality  than  in  this  single  and 
geometrical  world  of  commerce.  It  belongs  to 
sanity  and  common-sense,  as  men  now  possess 
them,  to  admit  no  countries  unknown  to  geography 
and  filling  no  part  of  the  conventional  space  in 
three  dimensions.  All  our  waking  experience  is 
understood  to  go  on  in  some  part  of  this  space, 
and  no  court  of  law  would  admit  evidence  relating 
to  events  in  some  other  sphere. 

This  principle,  axiomatic  as  it  has  become,  is  in 
no  way  primitive,  since  primitive  experience  is 
sporadic  and  introduces  us  to  detached  scenes 
separated  by  lapses  in  our  senses  and  attention. 
These  scenes  do  not  hang  together  in  any  local 
contiguity.  To  construct  a  chart  of  the  world  is 
a  difficult  feat  of  synthetic  imagination,  not  to  be 
performed  without  speculative  boldness  and  a 
heroic  insensibility  to  the  claims  of  fancy.  Even 
now  most  people  live  without  topographical  ideas 
and  have  no  clear  conception  of  the  spatial  rela- 
tions that  keep  together  the  world  in  which  they 
move.  They  feel  their  daily  way  about  like 
animals,  following  a  habitual  scent,  without  dom- 
inating the  range  of  their  instinctive  wanderings. 
Eeality  is  rather  a  story  to  them  than  a  system  of 
objects  and  forces,  nor  would  they  think  them- 
selves mad  if  at  any  time  their  experience  should 
wander  into  a  fourth  dimension.  Vague  dramatic 
and  moral  laws,  when  they  find  any  casual  ap- 


120  THE   LIFE   OF   REASON 

plication,  seem  to  such  dreaming  minds  more 
notable  truths,  deeper  revelations  of  efficacious 
reality,  than  the  mechanical  necessities  of  the  case, 
which  they  scarcely  conceive  of;  and  in  this  pri- 
mordial prejudice  they  are  confirmed  by  supersti- 
tious affinities  often  surviving  in  their  religion 
and  philosophy.  In  the  midst  of  cities  and  affairs 
they  are  like  landsmen  at  sea,  incapable  of  an  in- 
tellectual conception  of  their  position:  nor  have 
they  any  complete  confidence  in  their  principles 
of  navigation.  They  know  the  logarithms  by  rote 
merely,  and  if  they  reflect  are  reduced  to  a  stupid 
wonder  and  only  half  believe  they  are  in  a  known 
universe  or  will  ever  reach  an  earthly  port.  It 
would  not  require  superhuman  eloquence  in  some 
prophetic  passenger  to  persuade  them  to  throw 
compass  and  quadrant  overboard  and  steer  enthu- 
siastically for  El  Dorado.  The  theory  of  naviga- 
tion is  essentially  as  speculative  as  that  of  salva- 
tion, only  it  has  survived  more  experiences  of  the 
judgment  and  repeatedly  brought  those  who  trust 
in  it  to  their  promised  land. 
Its  unity  ideal  The  theory  that  all  real  objects  and 
and  discover-    places  lie  together  in   one  even  and 

able  only  by       ,  .       ,  .      . 

steady  homogencous  space,  conceived  as  simi- 

thought.  lar  in  its  constitution  to  the  parts  of 

extension  of  which  we  have  immediate  intuition,  is 
a  theory  of  the  greatest  practical  importance  and 
validity.  By  its  light  we  carry  on  all  our  affairs, 
and  the  success  of  our  action  while  we  rely  upon  it 
is  the  best  proof  of  its  truth.    The  imaginative 


NATUEE   UNIFIED  121 

parsimony  and  discipline  which  such  a  theory  in- 
volves are  balanced  by  the  immense  extension  and 
certitude  it  gives  to  knowledge.  It  is  at  once  an 
act  of  allegiance  to  nature  and  a  Magna  Charta 
which  mind  imposes  on  the  tyrannous  world,  which 
in  turn  pledges  itself  before  the  assembled  facul- 
ties of  man  not  to  exceed  its  constitutional  privi- 
lege and  to  harbour  no  magic  monsters  in  unattain- 
able lairs  from  which  they  might  issue  to  disturb 
human  labours.  Yet  that  spontaneous  intelligence 
which  first  enabled  men  to  make  this  genial  dis- 
covery and  take  so  fundamental  a  step  toward 
taming  experience  should  not  be  laid  by  after  this 
first  victory;  it  is  a  weapon  needed  in  many  sub- 
sequent conflicts.  To  conceive  that  all  nature 
makes  one  system  is  only  a  beginning :  the  articu- 
lation of  natural  life  has  still  to  be  discovered  in 
detail  and,  what  is  more,  a  similar  articulation 
has  to  be  given  to  the  psychic  world  which  now,  by 
the  very  act  that  constitutes  Nature  and  makes 
her  consistent,  appears  at  her  side  or  rather  in 
her  bosom. 

That  the  unification  of  nature  is  eventual  and 
theoretical  is  a  point  useful  to  remember :  else  the 
relation  of  the  natural  world  to  poetry,  meta- 
physics, and  religion  will  never  become  intelligible. 
Lalandc,  or  whoever  it  was,  who  searched  the 
heavens  with  his  telescope  and  could  find  no  God, 
would  not  have  found  the  human  mind  if  he  had 
searched  the  brain  with  a  microscope.  Yet  God 
existed  in  man's  apprehension  long  before  mathe- 


122  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

matics  or  even,  perhaps,  before  the  vault  of 
heaven;  for  the  objectification  of  the  whole  mind, 
with  its  passions  and  motives,  naturally  precedes 
that  abstraction  by  which  the  idea  of  a  material 
world  is  drawn  from  the  chaos  of  experience,  an 
abstraction  which  culminates  in  such  atomic  and 
astronomical  theories  as  science  is  now  familiar 
with.  The  sense  for  life  in  things,  be  they  small 
or  great,  is  not  derived  from  the  abstract  idea  of 
their  bodies  but  is  an  ancient  concomitant  to  that 
idea,  inseparable  from  it  until  it  became  abstract. 
Truth  and  materiality,  mechanism  and  ideal  in- 
terests, are  collateral  projections  from  one  rolling 
experience,  which  shows  up  one  aspect  or  the  other 
as  it  develops  various  functions  and  dominates 
itself  to  various  ends.  When  one  ore  is  abstracted 
and  purified,  the  residuum  subsists  in  that  prime- 
val quarry  in  which  it  originally  lay.  The  failure 
to  find  God  among  the  stars,  or  even  the  attempt 
to  find  him  there,  does  not  indicate  that  human 
experience  affords  no  avenue  to  the  idea  of  God — 
for  history  proves  the  contrary — ^but  indicates 
rather  the  atrophy  in  this  particular  man  of  the 
imaginative  faculty  by  which  his  race  had  attained 
to  that  idea.  Such  an  atrophy  might  indeed 
become  general,  and  God  would  in  that  case  dis- 
appear from  human  experience  as  music  would  dis- 
appear if  universal  deafness  attacked  the  race. 
Such  an  event  is  made  conceivable  by  the  loss  of 
allied  imaginative  habits,  which  is  observable  in 
historic  times.     Yet  possible  variations  in  human 


NATURE    UNIFIED  123 

faculty  do  not  involve  the  illegitimacy  of  such 
faculties  as  actually  subsist;  and  the  abstract  world 
known  to  science,  unless  it  dries  up  the  ancient 
fountains  of  ideation  by  its  habitual  presence  in 
thought,  does  not  remove  those  parallel  dramatisa- 
tions or  abstractions  which  experience  may  have 
suggested  to  men. 

What  enables  men  to  perceive  the  unity  of 
nature  is  the  unification  of  their  own  wills.  A 
man  half-asleep,  without  fixed  purposes,  without 
intellectual  keenness  or  joy  in  recognition,  might 
graze  about  like  an  animal,  forgetting  each  satis- 
faction in  the  next  and  banishing  from  his  frivo- 
lous mind  the  memory  of  every  sorrow;  what  had 
just  failed  to  kill  him  would  leave  him  as  thought- 
less and  unconcerned  as  if  it  had  never  crossed 
his  path.  Such  irrational  elasticity  and  innocent 
improvidence  would  never  put  two  and  two 
together.  Every  morning  there  would  be  a  new 
world  with  the  same  fool  to  live  in  it.  But  let 
some  sobering  passion,  some  serious  interest,  lend 
perspective  to  the  mind,  and  a  point  of  reference 
will  immediately  be  given  for  protracted  observa- 
tion; then  the  laws  of  nature  will  begin  to  dawn 
upon  thought.  Every  experiment  will  become  a 
lesson,  every  event  will  be  remembered  as  favour- 
able or  unfavourable  to  the  master-passion.  At 
first,  indeed,  this  keen  observation  will  probably 
be  animistic  and  the  laws  discovered  will  be 
chiefly  habits,  human  or  divine,  special  favours  or 
envious  punishments  and  warnings.     But  the  same 


124  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

constancy  of  aim  which  discovers  the  dramatic  con- 
flicts composing  society,  and  tries  to  read  nature 
in  terms  of  passion,  will,  if  it  be  long  sustained, 
discover  behind  this  glorious  chaos  a  deeper 
mechanical  order.  Men's  thoughts,  like  the 
weather,  are  not  so  arbitrary  as  they  seem  and  the 
true  master  in  observation,  the  man  guided  by  a 
steadfast  and  superior  purpose,  will  see  them  re- 
volving about  their  centres  in  obedience  to  quite 
calculable  instincts,  and  the  principle  of  all  their 
flutterings  will  not  be  hidden  from  his  eyes. 
Belief  in  indeterminism  is  a  sign  of  indetermina- 
tion.  No  commanding  or  steady  intellect  flirts 
with  so  miserable  a  possibility,  which  in  so  far  as 
it  actually  prevailed  would  make  virtue  impotent 
and  experience,  in  its  pregnant  sense,  impossible. 
Mind  the  We    have    said    that    those    objects 

due*  of  exist-  ^hich  caunot  be  incorporated  into  the 
ence.  one    spacc    which    the    understanding 

envisages  are  relegated  to  another  sphere  called 
imagination.  We  reach  here  a  most  important 
corollary.  As  material  objects,  making  a  single 
system  which  fills  space  and  evolves  in  time,  are 
conceived  by  abstraction  from  the  flux  of  sensuous 
experience,  so,  pari  passu,  the  rest  of  experience, 
with  all  its  other  outgrowths  and  concretions,  falls 
out  with  the  physical  world  and  forms  the  sphere 
of  mind,  the  sphere  of  memory,  fancy,  and  the 
passions.  We  have  in  this  discrimination  the 
genesis  of  mind,  not  of  course  in  the  transcenden- 
tal sense  in  which  the  word  mind  is  extended  to 


NATURE   UNIFIED  125 

mean  the  sum  total  and  mere  fact  of  existence — 
for  mind,  so  taken,  can  have  no  origin  and  indeed 
no  specific  meaning — but  the  genesis  of  mind  as 
a  determinate  form  of  being,  a  distinguishable  part 
of  the  universe  known  to  experience  and  discourse, 
the  mind  that  unravels  itself  in  meditation,  in- 
habits animal  bodies,  and  is  studied  in  psychology. 
Mind,  in  this  proper  sense  of  the  word,  is  the 
residue  of  existence,  the  leavings,  so  to  speak, 
and  parings  of  experience  when  the  material  world 
has  been  cut  out  of  the  whole  cloth.  Keflection 
underlines  in  the  chaotic  continuum  of  sense  and 
longing  those  aspects  that  have  practical  signifi- 
cance; it  selects  the  eflBcacious  ingredients  in  the 
world.  The  trustworthy  object  which  is  thus  re- 
tained in  thought,  the  complex  of  connected 
events,  is  nature,  and  though  so  intelligible  an 
object  is  not  soon  nor  vulgarly  recognised,  because 
human  reflection  is  perturbed  and  halting,  yet  every 
forward  step  in  scientific  and  practical  knowledge 
is  a  step  toward  its  clearer  definition.  At  first 
much  parasitic  matter  clings  to  that  dynamic 
skeleton.  Nature  is  drawn  like  a  sponge  heavy 
and  dripping  from  the  waters  of  sentience.  It  is 
soaked  with  inefficacious  passions  and  overlaid 
with  idle  accretions.  Nature,  in  a  word,  is  at  first 
conceived  mythically,  dramatically,  and  retains 
much  of  the  unintelligible,  sporadic  habit  of  ani- 
mal experience  itself.  But  as  attention  awakes 
and  discrimination,  practically  inspired,  grows 
firm  and  stable,  irrelevant  qualities  are  stripped 


126  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

off,  and  the  mechanical  process,  the  efficacious  in- 
fallible order,  is  clearly  disclosed  beneath.  Mean- 
time the  incidental  effects,  the  "  secondary  quali- 
ties/' are  relegated  to  a  personal  inconsequential 
region;  they  constitute  the  realm  of  appearance, 
the  realm  of  mind. 

GhosUy  char-  Mind  is  therefore  sometimes  identi- 
acter  of  mind,  fied  with  the  Unreal.  We  oppose,  in 
an  antithesis  natural  to  thought  and  language,  the 
imaginary  to  the  true,  fancy  to  fact,  idea  to  thing. 
But  this  thing,  fact,  or  external  reality  is,  as  we 
have  seen,  a  completion  and  hypostasis  of  certain 
portions  of  experience,  packed  into  such  shapes  as 
prove  cogent  in  thought  and  practice.  The  stuff 
of  external  reality,  the  matter  out  of  which  its  idea 
is  made,  is  therefore  continuous  with  the  stuff  and 
matter  of  our  own  minds.  Their  common  sub- 
stance is  the  immediate  flux.  This  living  worm 
has  propagated  by  fission,  and  the  two  halves  into 
which  it  has  divided  its  life  are  mind  and  nature. 
Mind  has  kept  and  clarified  the  crude  appearance, 
the  dream,  the  purpose  that  seethed  in  the  mass; 
nature  has  appropriated  the  order,  the  constant 
conditions,  the  causal  substructure,  disclosed  in 
reflection,  by  which  the  immediate  flux  is  ex- 
plained and  controlled.  The  chemistry  of 
thought  has  precipitated  these  contrasted  terms, 
each  maintaining  a  recognisable  identity  and  hav- 
ing the  function  of  a  point  of  reference  for 
memory  and  will.  Some  of  these  terms  or  objects 
of  thought  we  call  things  and  marshal  in  all  their 


NATURE    UNIFIED  127 

ideal  stability — for  there  is  constancy  in  their 
motions  and  transformations — to  make  the  intel- 
ligible external  world  of  practice  and  science. 
Whatever  stuff  has  not  been  absorbed  in  this  con- 
struction, whatever  facts  of  sensation,  ideation,  or 
will,  do  not  coalesce  with  the  newest  conception 
of  reality,  we  then  call  the  mind. 

Raw  experience,  then,  lies  at  the  basis  of  the 
idea  of  nature  and  approves  its  reality;  while  an 
equal  reality  belongs  to  the  residue  of  experience, 
not  taken  up,  as  yet,  into  that  idea.  But  this  resid- 
ual sensuous  reality  often  seems  comparatively 
unreal  because  what  it  presents  is  entirely  without 
practical  force  apart  from  its  mechanical  asso- 
ciates. This  inconsequential  character  of  what 
remains  over  follows  of  itself  from  the  concretion 
of  whatever  is  constant  and  efficacious  into  the 
external  world.  If  this  fact  is  ever  called  in  ques- 
tion, it  is  only  because  the  external  world  is 
vaguely  conceived,  and  loose  wills  and  ideas  are 
thought  to  govern  it  by  magic.  Yet  in  many  ways 
falling  short  of  absolute  precision  people  recognise 
that  thought  is  not  dynamic  or,  as  they  call  it, 
not  real.  The  idea  of  the  physical  world  is  the 
first  flower  or  thick  cream  of  practical  thinking. 
Being  skimmed  off  first  and  proving  so  nutri- 
cious,  it  leaves  the  liquid  below  somewhat  thin  and 
unsavoury.  Especially  does  this  result  appear 
when  science  is  still  unpruned  and  mythical,  so 
that  what  passes  into  the  idea  of  material  nature 
is  much  more  than  the  truly  causal  network  of 


128  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

forces,  and  includes  many  spiritual  and  moral 
functions. 

The  material  world,  as  conceived  in  the  first  in- 
stance, had  not  that  clear  abstractness,  nor  the 
spiritual  world  that  wealth  and  interest,  which  they 
have  acquired  for  modern  minds.  The  complex 
reactions  of  man's  soul  had  been  objectified 
together  with  those  visual  and  tactile  sensations 
which,  reduced  to  a  mathematical  baldness,  now 
furnish  terms  to  natural  science.  Mind  then 
dwelt  in  the  world,  not  only  in  the  warmth  and 
beauty  with  which  it  literally  clothed  material 
objects,  as  it  still  does  in  poetic  perception,  but  in 
a  literal  animistic  way;  for  human  passion  and 
reflection  were  attributed  to  every  object  and  made 
a  fairy-land  of  the  world.  Poetry  and  religion  dis- 
cerned life  in  those  very  places  in  which  sense  and 
understanding  perceived  body;  and  when  so  much 
of  the  burden  of  experience  took  wing  into  space, 
and  the  soul  herself  floated  almost  visibly  among 
the  forms  of  nature,  it  is  no  marvel  that  the  poor 
remnant,  a  mass  of  merely  personal  troubles,  an 
uninteresting  distortion  of  things  in  individual 
minds,  should  have  seemed  a  sad  and  unsubstan- 
tial accident.  The  inner  world  was  all  the  more 
ghostly  because  the  outer  world  was  so  much  alive. 
Hypostasis  This  movemcut  of  thought,  which 

bo^hTeef""    clothed    external    objects    in    all    the 
control.  wealth   of   undeciphered   dreams,   has 

long  lost  its  momentum  and  yielded  to  a  contrary 
tendency.     Just  as  the  hypostasis  of  some  terms 


NATURE   UNIFIED  129 

in  experience  is  sanctioned  by  reason,  when  the 
objects  so  fixed  and  externalised  can  serve  as 
causes  and  explanations  for  the  order  of  eyents, 
so  the  criticism  which  tends  to  retract  that  hypos- 
tasis is  sanctioned  by  reason  when  the  hypostasis 
has  exceeded  its  function  and  the  external  object 
conceived  is  loaded  with  useless  ornament.  The 
transcendental  and  functional  secret  of  such 
hypostases,  however,  is  seldom  appreciated  by  the 
headlong  mind;  so  that  the  ebb  no  less  than  the 
flow  of  objectification  goes  on  blindly  and  impul- 
sively, and  is  carried  to  absurd  extremes.  An  age 
of  mythology  yields  to  an  age  of  subjectivity ;  rea- 
son being  equally  neglected  and  exceeded  in  both. 
The  reaction  against  imagination  has  left  the  ex- 
ternal world,  as  represented  in  many  minds,  stark 
and  bare.  All  the  interesting  and  vital  qualities 
which  matter  had  once  been  endowed  with  have 
been  attributed  instead  to  an  irresponsible  sensi- 
bility in  man.  And  as  habits  of  ideation  change 
slowly  and  yield  only  piecemeal  to  criticism  or  to 
fresh  intuitions,  such  a  revolution  has  not  been 
carried  out  consistently,  but  instead  of  a  thorough 
renaming  of  things  and  a  new  organisation  of 
thought  it  has  produced  chiefly  distress  and  con- 
fusion. Some  phases  of  this  confusion  may  per- 
haps repay  a  moment's  attention ;  they  may  enable 
us,  when  seen  in  their  logical  sequence,  to  under- 
stand somewhat  better  the  hypostasising  intellect 
that  is  trying  to  assert  itself  and  come  to  the  light 
through  all  these  gropings. 
VoL.L-« 


130  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

Comparative  What  helps  in  the  first  place  to  dis- 
constancy  in    closc  a  permanent  obiect  is  a  permanent 

objects  and  ^  ''  ^ 

in  ideas.  scnsation.  There  is  a  vast  and  clear  dif- 

ference between  a  floating  and  a  fixed  feeling ;  the 
latter,  in  normal  circumstances,  is  present  only 
when  continuous  stimulation  renews  it  at  every 
moment.  Attention  may  wander,  but  the  objects 
in  the  environment  do  not  cease  to  radiate  their 
influences  on  the  body,  which  is  thereby  not 
allowed  to  lose  the  modification  which  those  in- 
fluences provoke.  The  consequent  perception  is 
therefore  always  at  hand  and  in  its  repetitions  sub- 
stantially identical.  Perceptions  not  renewed  in 
this  way  by  continuous  stimulation  come  and  go 
with  cerebral  currents;  they  are  rare  visitors, 
instead  of  being,  like  external  objects,  members 
of  the  household.  Intelligence  is  most  at  home  in 
the  ultimate,  which  is  the  object  of  intent.  Those 
realities  which  it  can  trust  and  continually  recover 
are  its  familiar  and  beloved  companions.  The 
mists  that  may  originally  have  divided  it  from 
them,  and  which  psychologists  call  the  mind,  are 
gladly  forgotten  so  soon  as  intelligence  avails  to 
pierce  them,  and  as  friendly  communication  can 
be  established  with  the  real  world.  Moreover,  per- 
ceptions not  sustained  by  a  constant  external 
stimulus  are  apt  to  be  greatly  changed  when  they 
reappear,  and  to  be  changed  unaccountably, 
whereas  external  things  show  some  method  and 
proportion  in  their  variations.  Even  when  not 
much  changed  in  themselves,  mere  ideas  fall  into 


NATUEE    UNIFIED  131 

a  new  setting,  whereas  things,  unless  something 
else  has  intervened  to  move  them,  reappear  in 
their  old  places.  Finally  things  are  acted  upon  by 
other  men,  but  thoughts  are  hidden  from  them  by 
divine  miracle. 

Existence  reveals  reality  when  the  flux  discloses 
something  permanent  that  dominates  it.  What  is 
thus  dominated,  though  it  is  the  primary  existence 
itself,  is  thereby  degraded  to  appearance.  Percep- 
tions caused  by  external  objects  are,  as  we  have  just 
seen,  long  sustained  in  comparison  with  thoughts 
and  fancies ;  but  the  objects  are  themselves  in  flux 
and  a  man's  relation  to  them  may  be  even  more 
variable;  so  that  very  often  a  memory  or  a  senti- 
ment will  recur,  almost  unchanged  in  character, 
long  after  the  perception  that  first  aroused  it  has 
become  impossible.  The  brain,  though  mobile,  is 
subject  to  habit;  its  formations,  while  they  lapse 
instantly,  return  again  and  again.  These  ideal 
objects  may  accordingly  be  in  a  way  more  real 
and  enduring  than  things  external.  Hence  no 
primitive  mind  puts  all  reality,  or  what  is  most 
real  in  reality,  in  an  abstract  material  universe. 
It  finds,  rather,  ideal  points  of  reference  by  which 
material  mutation  itself  seems  to  be  controlled. 
An  ideal  world  is  recognised  from  the  beginning 
and  placed,  not  in  the  immediate  foreground, 
nearer  than  material  things,  but  much  farther  off. 
It  has  greater  substantiality  and  independence 
than  material  objects  are  credited  with.  It  is 
divine. 


132  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

When  agriculture,  commerce,  or  manual  crafts 
have  given  men  some  knowledge  of  nature,  the 
world  thus  recognised  and  dominated  is  far  from 
seeming  ultimate.  It  is  thought  to  lie  between 
two  others,  both  now  often  called  mental,  but  in 
their  original  quality  altogether  disparate:  the 
world  of  spiritual  forces  and  that  of  sensuous 
appearance.  The  notions  of  permanence  and  in- 
dependence by  which  material  objects  are  con- 
ceived apply  also,  of  course,  to  everything  spirit- 
ual; and  while  the  dominion  exercised  by  spirits 
may  be  somewhat  precarious,  they  are  as  remote 
as  possible  from  immediacy  and  sensation.  They 
come  and  go;  they  govern  nature  or,  if  they  neg- 
lect to  do  so,  it  is  from  aversion  or  high  indiffer- 
ence ;  they  visit  man  with  obsessions  and  diseases ; 
they  hasten  to  extricate  him  from  difficulties ;  and 
they  dwell  in  him,  constituting  his  powers  of 
conscience  and  invention.  Sense,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  mere  effect,  either  of  body  or  spirit  or 
of  both  in  conjunction.  It  gives  a  vitiated  per- 
sonal view  of  these  realities.  Its  pleasures  are 
dangerous  and  unintelligent,  and  it  perishes  as 
it  goes. 
Spirit  and  Such   are,   for  primitive   appercep- 

brthet'reTa-  *^^°'  *^^  ^^^^^  ^^^*  ^^alms  of  being: 
tion  to  nature,  nature,  seusc,  and  spirit.  Their 
frontiers,  however,  always  remain  uncertain. 
Sense,  because  it  is  insignificant  when  made  an 
object,  is  long  neglected  by  reflection.  No  at- 
tempt is  made  to  describe  its  processes  or  ally  them 


NATURE   UNIFIED  133 

systematically  to  natural  changes.  Its  illusions, 
when  noticed,  are  regarded  as  scandals  calculated 
to  foster  scepticism.  The  spiritual  world  is,  on 
the  other  hand,  a  constant  theme  for  poetry  and 
speculation.  In  the  absence  of  ideal  science,  it 
can  be  conceived  only  in  myths,  which  are 
naturally  as  shifting  and  self -contradictory  as  they 
are  persistent.  They  acquire  no  fixed  character 
until,  in  dogmatic  religion,  they  are  defined  with 
reference  to  natural  events,  foretold  or  reported. 
Nature  is  what  first  acquires  a  form  and  then 
imparts  form  to  the  other  spheres.  Sense  admits 
definition  and  distribution  only  as  an  effect  of 
nature  and  spirit  only  as  its  principle.  ' 
Vague  notions  The  form  nature  acquires  is,  how- 
of  nature  in-    evcr,  itsclf  vaguc  and  uncertain  and 

volve  vague  .,,  n        i  x      j   /> 

notions  of  Can  ill  scrvc,  lor  long  ages,  to  denne 
spirit.  the  other  realms  which  depend  on  it 

for  definition.  Hence  it  has  been  common,  for 
instance,  to  treat  the  spiritual  as  a  remote  or  finer 
form  of  the  natural.  Beyond  the  moon  everything 
seemed  permanent;  it  was  therefore  called  divine 
and  declared  to  preside  over  the  rest.  The  breath 
that  escaped  from  the  lips  at  death,  since  it  took 
away  with  it  the  spiritual  control  and  miraculous 
life  that  had  quickened  the  flesh,  was  itself  the 
spirit.  On  the  other  hand,  natural  processes  have 
been  persistently  attributed  to  spiritual  causes, 
for  it  was  not  matter  that  moved  itself  but  intent 
that  moved  it.  Thus  spirit  was  barbarously  taken 
for  a  natural  substance  and  a  natural  force.     It 


134  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

was  identified  with  everything  in  which  it  was 
manifested,  so  long  as  no  natural  causes  could  be 
assigned  for  that  operation. 
^  ,  If   the   unification   of  nature   were 

Sense  and 

spirit  the  life  of  complete  sense  would  evidently  fall 
nature. which  within  it;  siuce  it  is  to  subtend  and 

science  redis-  '  _ 

tributes  but  sustain  the  sensible  flux  that  intelli- 
does  not  deny,  ggj^^g  acknowledges  first  stray  mate- 
rial objects  and  then  their  general  system.  The 
elements  of  experience  not  taken  up  into  the  con- 
stitution of  objects  remain  attached  to  them  as 
their  life.  In  the  end  the  dynamic  skeleton, 
without  losing  its  articulation,  would  be  clothed 
again  with  its  flesh.  Suppose  my  notions  of  as- 
tronomy allowed  me  to  believe  that  the  sun,  sink- 
ing into  the  sea,  was  extinguished  every  evening, 
and  that  what  appeared  the  next  morning  was  his 
younger  brother,  hatched  in  a  sun-producing  nest 
to  be  found  in  the  Eastern  regions.  My  theory 
would  have  robbed  yesterday's  sun  of  its  life  and 
brightness ;  it  would  have  asserted  that  during  the 
night  no  sun  existed  anywhere ;  but  it  would  have 
added  the  sun's  qualities  afresh  to  a  matter  that 
did  not  previously  possess  them,  namely,  to  the 
imagined  egg  that  would  produce  a  sun  for  to- 
morrow. Suppose  we  substitute  for  that  astron- 
omy the  one  that  now  prevails :  we  have  deprived 
the  single  sun — which  now  exists  and  spreads  its 
influences  without  interruption — of  its  humanity 
and  even  of  its  metaphysical  unity.  It  has  become 
a  congeries  of  chemical  substances.     The  facts  re- 


NATUEE    UNIFIED  135 

vealed  to  perception  have  partly  changed  their 
locus  and  been  differently  deployed  throughout 
nature.  Some  have  become  attached  to  operations 
in  the  human  brain.  Nature  has  not  thereby  lost 
any  quality  she  had  ever  manifested;  these  have 
merely  been  redistributed  so  as  to  secure  a  more 
systematic  connection  between  them  all.  They 
are  the  materials  of  the  system,  which  has  been 
conceived  by  making  existences  continuous,  when- 
ever this  extension  of  their  being  was  needful  to 
render  their  recurrences  intelligible.  Sense,  which 
was  formerly  regarded  as  a  sad  distortion  of  its 
objects,  now  becomes  an  original  and  congruent 
part  of  nature,  from  which,  as  from  any  other 
part,  the  rest  of  nature  might  be  scientifically 
inferred. 

Spirit  is  not  less  closely  attached  to  nature, 
although  in  a  different  manner.  Taken  existen- 
tially  it  is  a  part  of  sense;  taken  ideally  it  is  the 
form  or  value  which  nature  acquires  when  viewed 
from  the  vantage-ground  of  any  interest.  Indi- 
vidual objects  are  recognisable  for  a  time  not 
because  the  flux  is  materially  arrested  but  because 
it  somewhere  circulates  in  a  fashion  which  awakens 
an  interest  and  brings  different  parts  of  the  sur- 
rounding process  into  definable  and  prolonged  re- 
lations with  that  interest.  Particular  objects  may 
perish  yet  others  may  continue,  like  the  series  of 
suns  imagined  by  Ileraclitus,  to  perform  the  same 
office.  The  function  will  outlast  the  particular 
organ.     That  interest  in  reference  to  which  the 


136  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

function  is  defined  will  essentially  determine  a 
perfect  world  of  responsive  extensions  and  con- 
ditions. These  ideals  will  be  a  spiritual  reality; 
and  they  will  be  expressed  in  nature  in  so  far  as 
nature  supports  that  regulative  interest.  Many  a 
perfect  and  eternal  realm,  merely  potential  in  ex- 
istence but  definite  in  constitution,  will  thus  sub- 
tend nature  and  be  what  a  rational  philosophy 
might  call  the  ideal.  What  is  called  spirit  would 
be  the  ideal  in  so  far  as  it  obtained  expression  in 
nature;  and  the  power  attributed  to  spirit  would 
be  the  part  of  nature's  fertility  by  which  such 
expression  was  secured. 


CHAPTER   VI 

DISCOVERY  OF  FELLOW-MINDS 

Another  back-  When  a  ghostlj  Sphere,  containing 
cur^e"nt  °^  memorj  and  all  ideas,  has  been  distin- 
experience  guished  from  the  material  world,  it 
Talien  m^ni.  ^^nds  to  grow  at  the  expense  of  the  lat- 
ter, until  nature  is  finally  reduced  to  a 
mathematical  skeleton.  This  skeleton  itself, but  for 
the  need  of  a  bridge  to  connect  calculably  episode 
with  episode  in  experience,  might  be  transferred  to 
mind  and  identified  with  the  scientific  thought  in 
which  it  is  represented.  But  a  scientific  theory 
inhabiting  a  few  scattered  moments  of  life  can- 
not connect  those  episodes  among  which  it  is  itself 
the  last  and  the  least  substantial;  nor  would  such 
a  notion  have  occurred  even  to  the  most  reckless 
sceptic,  had  the  world  not  possessed  another  sort 
of  reputed  reality — the  minds  of  others — which 
could  serve,  even  after  the  supposed  extinction  of 
the  physical  world,  to  constitute  an  independent 
order  and  to  absorb  the  potentialities  of  being 
when  immediate  consciousness  nodded.  But  other 
men's  minds,  being  themselves  precarious  and  in- 
effectual, would  never  have  seemed  a  possible  sub- 
stitute for  nature,  to  be  in  her  stead  the  back- 

187 


138  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

ground  and  intelligible  object  of  experience. 
Something  constant,  omnipresent,  infinitely  fer- 
tile is  needed  to  support  and  connect  the  given 
chaos.  Just  these  properties,  however,  are  actu- 
ally attributed  to  one  of  the  minds  supposed  to 
confront  the  thinker,  namely,  the  mind  of  God. 
The  divine  mind  has  therefore  always  constituted 
in  philosophy  either  the  alternative  to  nature  or 
her  other  name :  it  is  par  excellence  the  seat  of  all 
potentiality  and,  as  Spinoza  said,  the  refuge  of  all 
ignorance. 

Speculative  problems  would  be  greatly  clarified, 
and  what  is  genuine  in  them  would  be  more  easily 
distinguished  from  what  is  artificial,  if  we  could 
gather  together  again  the  original  sources  for  the 
belief  in  separate  minds  and  compare  these 
sources  with  those  we  have  already  assigned  to  the 
conception  of  nature.  But  speculative  problems 
are  not  alone  concerned,  for  in  all  social  life  we 
envisage  fellow-creatures  conceived  to  share  the 
same  thoughts  and  passions  and  to  be  similarly 
affected  by  events.  What  is  the  basis  of  this  con- 
viction ?  What  are  the  forms  it  takes,  and  in  what 
sense  is  it  a  part  or  an  expression  of  reason  ? 

This  question  is  difficult,  and  in  broaching  it  we 
cannot  expect  much  aid  from  what  philosophers 
have  hitherto  said  on  the  subject.  For  the  most 
part,  indeed,  they  have  said  nothing,  as  by  nature's 
kindly  disposition  most  questions  which  it  is 
beyond  a  man's  power  to  answer  do  not  occur  to 
him  at  all.     The  suggestions  which  have  actually 


DISCOVERY    OF   FELLOW-MINDS         139 

been  made  in  the  matter  may  be  reduced  to  two: 
first,  that  we  conceive  other  men's  minds  by  pro- 
Two  usual  ac-  jccting  into  their  bodies  those  feelings 
counts  of  this    -^^rj^ich  we  immediately  perceive  to  ac- 

conception  .  . 

criticised:  Company  similar  operations  in  our- 
selves;, that  is,  we  infer  alien  minds  by  analogy; 
and  second,  that  we  are  immediately  aware  of 
them  and  feel  them  to  be  friendly  or  hostile 
counterparts  of  our  own  thinking  and  effort,  that 
is,  we  evoke  them  by  dramatic  imagination. 

The  first  suggestion  has  the  advan- 

analogy  °° 

between  tage  that  it  escapes  solipsism  by  a  rea- 

bodies,  sonable  argument,  provided  the  exist- 

ence of  the  material  world  has  already  been 
granted.  But  if  the  material  world  is  called  back 
into  the  private  mind,  it  is  evident  that  every  soul 
supposed  to  inhabit  it  or  to  be  expressed  in  it  must 
follow  it  thither,  as  inevitably  as  the  characters 
and  forces  in  an  imagined  story  must  remain  with 
it  in  the  inventor's  imagination.  When,  on  the 
contrary,  nature  is  left  standing,  it  is  reason- 
able to  suppose  that  animals  having  a  similar 
origin  and  similar  physical  powers  should  have 
similar  minds,  if  any  of  them  was  to  have  a 
mind  at  all.  The  theory,  however,  is  not  satis- 
factory on  other  grounds.  We  do  not  in  reality 
associate  our  own  grimaces  with  the  feelings  that 
accompany  them  and  subsequently,  on  recognis- 
ing similar  grimaces  in  another,  proceed  to  at- 
tribute emotions  to  him  like  those  we  formerly 
experienced.     Our  own  grimaces  are  not  easily 


140  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

perceived,  and  other  men's  actions  often  reveal 
passions  which  we  have  never  had,  at  least  with 
anything  like  their  suggested  colouring  and  in- 
tensity. This  first  view  is  strangely  artificial  and 
mistakes  for  the  natural  origin  of  the  belief  in 
question  what  may  be  perhaps  its  ultimate  test. 
The  second  suggestion,  on  the  other 

and  dramatic  ^"  ' 

dialogue  in      hand,  takcs  US  into  a  mystic  region. 

the  soul.  rpj^^^  ^g  g^Qj^g  ^^g  f  gl^  gQ^jg  Qf  Q^j.  f  gj_ 

lows  by  dramatic  imagination  is  doubtless  true; 
but  this  does  not  explain  how  we  come  to  do  so, 
under  what  stimulus  and  in  what  circumstances. 
Nor  does  it  avoid  solipsism;  for  the  felt  counter- 
parts of  my  own  will  are  echoes  within  me,  while 
if  other  minds  actually  exist  they  cannot  have  for 
their  essence  to  play  a  game  with  me  in  my  own 
fancy.  Such  society  would  be  mythical,  and  while 
the  sense  for  society  may  well  be  mythical  in  its 
origin,  it  must  acquire  some  other  character  if  it 
is  to  have  practical  and  moral  validity.  But  prac- 
tical and  moral  validity  is  above  all  what  society 
seems  to  have.  This  second  theory,  therefore, 
while  its  feeling  for  psychological  reality  is  keener, 
does  not  make  the  recognition  of  other  minds  in- 
telligible and  leaves  our  faith  in  them  without 
justification. 

Subject  and  ^^  approaching  the  subject  afresh 
object  empiri-  we  should  do  Well  to  remember  that 

cal,  not  tran-  j  .  ,  ,,  .  «   .^ 

scendentai,  crude  experience  knows  nothing  of  the 
terms.  distinction  between  subject  and  object. 

This  distinction  is  a  division  in  things,  a  contrast 


DISCOVEKY    OF   FELLOW-MINDS  141 

established  between  masses  of  images  which  show 
different  characteristics  in  their  modes  of  exist- 
ence and  relation.  If  this  truth  is  overlooked,  if 
subject  and  object  are  made  conditions  of  experi- 
ence instead  of  being,  like  body  and  mind,  its  con- 
trasted parts,  the  revenge  of  fate  is  quick  and 
ironical ;  either  subject  or  object  must  immediately 
collapse  and  evaporate  altogether.  All  objects 
must  become  modifications  of  the  subject  or  all 
subjects  aspects  or  fragments  of  the  object. 
Objects  origi-  ^^^  the  fact  that  crude  experience 
naUy  soaked     [q  innocent  of  modcm  philosophy  has 

in  secondary     , ,  .       .  ,       ,  n     l    j^ 

and  tertiary  this  important  conscqueucc :  that  lor 
qualities.  crudc  experience  all  data  whatever  lie 
originally  side  by  side  in  the  same  field ;  extension 
is  passionate,  desire  moves  bodies,  thought  broods 
in  space  and  is  constituted  by  a  visible  metamor- 
phosis of  its  subject  matter.  Animism  or  mythol- 
ogy is  therefore  no  artifice.  Passions  naturally 
reside  in  the  object  they  agitate — our  own  body, 
if  that  be  the  felt  seat  of  some  pang,  the  stars,  if 
the  pang  can  find  no  nearer  resting-place.  Only 
a  long  and  still  unfinished  education  has  taught 
men  to  separate  emotions  from  things  and  ideas 
from  their  objects.  This  education  was  needed 
because  crude  experience  is  a  chaos,  and  the  quali- 
ties it  jumbles  together  do  not  march  together  in 
time.  Reflection  must  accordingly  separate  them, 
if  knowledge  (that  is,  ideas  with  eventual  appli- 
cation and  practical  transcendence)  is  to  exist  at 
all.     In  other  words,  action  must  be  adjusted  to 


142  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

certain  elements  of  experience  and  not  to  others, 
and  those  chiefly  regarded  must  have  a  certain 
interpretation  put  upon  them  by  trained  apper- 
ception. The  rest  must  be  treated  as  moonshine 
and  taken  no  account  of  except  perhaps  in  idle  and 
poetic  revery.  In  this  way  crude  experience  grows 
reasonable  and  appearance  becomes  knowledge  of 
reality. 

The  fundamental  reason,  then,  why  we  attribute 
consciousness  to  natural  bodies  is  that  those  bodies, 
before  they  are  conceived  to  be  merely  material, 
are  conceived  to  possess  all  the  qualities  which 
our  own  consciousness  possesses  when  we  behold 
them.  Such  a  supposition  is  far  from  being  a 
paradox,  since  only  this  principle  justifies  us  to 
this  day  in  believing  in  whatever  we  may  decide 
to  believe  in.  The  qualities  attributed  to  reality 
must  be  qualities  found  in  experience,  and  if  we 
deny  their  presence  in  ourselves  {e.g.,  in  the  case 
of  omniscience),  that  is  only  because  the  idea  of 
self,  like  that  of  matter,  has  already  become 
special  and  the  region  of  ideals  (in  which  omni- 
science lies)  has  been  formed  into  a  third  sphere. 
But  before  the  idea  of  self  is  well  constituted  and 
before  the  category  of  ideals  has  been  conceived  at 
all,  every  ingredient  ultimately  assigned  to  those 
two  regions  is  attracted  into  the  perceptual  vortex 
for  which  such  qualities  as  pressure  and  motion 
supply  a  nucleus.  The  moving  image  is  there- 
fore impregnated  not  only  with  secondary  quali- 
ties— colour,  heat,  etc. — but  with  qualities  which 


DISCOVERY   OF   FELLOW-MINDS         143 

we  may  call  tertiary,  such  as  pain,  fear,  joy, 
malice,  feebleness,  expectancy.  Sometimes  these 
tertiary  qualities  are  attributed  to  the  object  in 
their  fulness  and  just  as  they  are  felt.  Thus  the 
sun  is  not  only  bright  and  warm  in  the  same  way 
as  he  is  round,  but  by  the  same  right  he  is  also 
happy,  arrogant,  ever-young,  and  all-seeing;  for  a 
suggestion  of  these  tertiary  qualities  runs  through 
us  when  we  look  at  him,  just  as  immediately  as  do 
his  warmth  and  light.  The  fact  that  these  imag- 
inative suggestions  are  not  constant  does  not  im- 
pede the  instant  perception  that  they  are  actual, 
and  for  crude  experience  whatever  a  thing  pos- 
sesses in  appearance  it  possesses  indeed,  no  matter 
how  soon  that  quality  may  be  lost  again.  The 
moment  when  things  have  most  numerous  and  best 
defined  tertiary  qualities  is  accordingly,  for  crude 
experience,  the  moment  when  they  are  most  ade- 
quately manifested  and  when  their  inner  essence 
is  best  revealed ;  for  it  is  then  that  they  appear  in 
experience  most  splendidly  arrayed  and  best 
equipped  for  their  eventual  functions.  The  sun 
is  a  better  expression  of  all  his  ulterior  effects 
when  he  is  conceived  to  be  an  arrogant  and  all- 
seeing  spirit  than  when  he  is  stupidly  felt  to  be 
merely  hot;  so  that  the  attentive  and  devout 
observer,  to  whom  those  tertiary  qualities  are  re- 
vealed, stands  in  the  same  relation  to  an  ordinary 
sensualist,  who  can  feel  only  the  sun's  material 
attributes,  as  the  sensualist  in  turn  stands  in  to 
one  born  blind,  who  cannot  add  the  sun's  bright- 


144  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

ness  to  its  warmth  except  by  faith  in  some  hap- 
pier man's  reported  intuition.  The  m}i;hologist 
or  poet,  before  science  exists,  is  accordingly  the 
man  of  truest  and  most  adequate  vision.  His  per- 
suasion that  he  knows  the  heart  and  soul  of  things 
is  no  fancy  reached  by  artificial  inference  or 
analogy  but  is  a  direct  report  of  his  own  experi- 
ence and  honest  contemplation. 

More  often,  however,  tertiary  quali- 
quauties  tics  are  somewhat  transposed  in  pro- 

transposed,  jection,  as  sound  in  being  lodged  in  the 
bell  is  soon  translated  into  sonority,  made,  that  is, 
into  its  own  potentiality.  In  the  same  way  pain- 
fulness  is  translated  into  malice  or  wickedness, 
terror  into  hate,  and  every  felt  tertiary  quality  into 
whatever  tertiary  quality  is  in  experience  its  more 
quiescent  or  potential  form.  So  religion,  which 
remains  for  the  most  part  on  the  level  of  crude 
experience,  attributes  to  the  gods  not  only  happi- 
ness— the  object's  direct  tertiary  quality — but 
goodness — its  tertiary  quality  transposed  and  made 
potential;  for  goodness  is  that  disposition  which 
is  fruitful  in  happiness  throughout  imagined  ex- 
perience. The  devil,  in  like  manner,  is  cruel  and 
wicked  as  well  as  tormented.  Uncritical  science 
still  attributes  these  transposed  tertiary  qualities 
to  nature;  the  mythical  notion  of  force,  for 
instance,  being  a  transposed  sensation  of  effort. 
In  this  case  we  may  distinguish  two  stages  or 
degrees  in  the  transposition :  first,  before  we  think 
of  our  own  pulling,  we  say  the  object  itself  puUs; 


DISCOVERY   OF    FELLOW-MINDS         145 

in  the  first  transposition  we  say  it  pulls  against 
us,  its  pull  is  the  counterpart  or  rival  of  ours  but 
it  is  still  conceived  in  the  same  direct  terms  of 
effort;  and  in  the  second  transposition  this  in- 
termittent effort  is  made  potential  or  slumbering 
in  what  we  call  strength  or  force. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  feelings  at- 
imputed  mind  tributcd  to  other  men  are  nothing  but 

consists  of  the  ° 

tertiary  quaU-  the  tertiary  qualities  of  their  bodies, 
ties  of  per-      j^^  beiuffs  of  the  same  species,  however, 

ceived  body.  °  r  '  ^ 

these  qualities  are  naturally  exceed- 
ingly numerous,  variable,  and  precise.  Nature 
has  made  man  man's  constant  study.  His 
thought,  from  infancy  to  the  drawing  up  of  his 
last  will  and  testament,  is  busy  about  his  neigh- 
bour. A  smile  makes  a  child  happy;  a  caress,  a 
moment's  sympathetic  attention,  wins  a  heart  and 
gives  the  friend's  presence  a  voluminous  and 
poignant  value.  In  youth  all  seems  lost  in  losing 
a  friend.  For  the  tertiary  values,  the  emotions 
attached  to  a  given  image,  the  moral  effluence 
emanating  from  it,  pervade  the  whole  present 
world.  The  sense  of  union,  though  momentary, 
is  the  same  that  later  returns  to  the  lover  or  the 
mystic,  when  he  feels  he  has  plucked  the  heart  of 
life's  mystery  and  penetrated  to  the  peaceful  cen- 
tre of  things.  What  the  mystic  beholds  in  his 
ecstasy  and  loses  in  his  moments  of  dryness,  what 
the  lover  pursues  and  adores,  what  the  child  cries 
for  when  left  alone,  is  much  more  a  spirit,  a  per- 
son, a  haunting  mind,  than  a  set  of  visual  sensa- 

VOL.  I.— 10 


146  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

tions;  yet  the  visual  sensations  are  connected  in- 
extricably with  that  spirit,  else  the  spirit  would 
not  withdraw  when  the  sensations  failed.  We  are 
not  dealing  with  an  articulate  mind  whose  posses- 
sions are  discriminated  and  distributed  into  a  mas- 
tered world  where  everything  has  its  department, 
its  special  relations,  its  limited  importance;  we 
are  dealing  with  a  mind  all  pulp,  all  confusion, 
keenly  sensitive  to  passing  influences  and  reacting 
on  them  massively  and  without  reserve. 

This  mind  is  feeble,  passionate,  and  ignorant. 
Its  sense  for  present  spirit  is  no  miracle  of  intelli- 
gence or  of  analogical  reasoning ;  on  the  contrary, 
it  betrays  a  vagueness  natural  to  rudimentary  con- 
sciousness. Those  visual  sensations  suddenly  cut 
off  cannot  there  be  recognised  for  what  they  are. 
The  consequences  which  their  present  disappear- 
ance may  have  for  subsequent  experience  are  in 
no  wise  foreseen  or  estimated,  much  less  are  any 
inexperienced  feelings  invented  and  attached  to 
that  retreating  figure,  otherwise  a  mere  puppet. 
What  happens  is  that  by  the  loss  of  an  absorbing 
stimulus  the  whole  chaotic  mind  is  thrown  out  of 
gear;  the  child  cries,  the  lover  faints,  the  mystic 
feels  hell  opening  before  him.  All  this  is  a  pres- 
ent sensuous  commotion,  a  derangement  in  an 
actual  dream.  Yet  just  at  this  lowest  plunge  of 
experience,  in  this  drunkenness  of  the  soul,  does 
the  overwhelming  reality  and  externality  of  the 
other  mind  dawn  upon  us.  Then  we  feel  that  we 
are  surrounded  not  by  a  blue  sky  or  an  earth 


DISCOVERY    OF    FELLOW-MINDS  147 

known  to  geographers  but  by  unutterable  and  most 
personal  hatreds  and  loves.  For  then  we  allow 
the  half-deciphered  images  of  sense  to  drag  behind 
them  every  emotion  they  have  awakened.  We 
endow  each  overmastering  stimulus  with  all  its 
diffuse  effects;  and  any  dramatic  potentiality  that 
our  dream  acts  out  under  that  high  pressure — 
and  crude  experience  is  rich  in  dreams — becomes 
our  notion  of  the  life  going  on  before  us.  We 
cannot  regard  it  as  our  own  life,  because  it  is  not 
felt  to  be  a  passion  in  our  own  body,  but  attaches 
itself  rather  to  images  we  see  moving  about  in 
the  world;  it  is  consequently,  without  hesitation, 
called  the  life  of  those  images,  or  those  creatures' 
souls. 

"Pathetic  ^^^^  pathetic  fallacy  is  accordingly 

faUacy"  nor-  what  Originally  peoples  the  imagined 
dinariiy  fai-  world.  All  the  feclings  aroused  by 
lacious.  perceived  things  are  merged  in  those 

things  and  made  to  figure  as  the  spiritual  and  in- 
visible part  of  their  essence,  a  part,  moreover, 
quite  as  well  known  and  as  directly  perceived  as 
their  motions.  To  ask  why  such  feelings  are 
objectified  would  be  to  betray  a  wholly  sophis- 
ticated view  of  experience  and  its  articulation. 
They  do  not  need  to  be  objectified,  seeing  they 
were  objective  from  the  beginning,  inasmuch  as 
they  pertain  to  objects  and  have  never,  any  more 
than  those  objects,  been  "subjectified"  or  localised 
in  the  thinker's  body,  nor  included  in  that  train 
of  images  which  as  a  whole  is  known  to  have  in 


148  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

that  body  its  seat  and  thermometer.  The  ther- 
mometer for  these  passions  is,  on  the  contrary,  the 
body  of  another;  and  the  little  dream  in  us,  the 
quick  dramatic  suggestion  which  goes  with  our 
perception  of  his  motions,  is  our  perception  of  his 
thoughts. 

A  sense  for  alien  thought  is  accordingly  at  its 
inception  a  complete  illusion.  The  thought  is 
one's  own,  it  is  associated  with  an  image  moving 
in  space,  and  is  uncritically  supposed  to  be  a  hid- 
den part  of  that  image,  a  metaphysical  significa- 
tion attached  to  its  motion  and  actually  existing 
behind  the  scenes  in  the  form  of  an  unheard 
soliloquy.  A  complete  illusion  this  sense  remains 
in  mythology,  in  animism,  in  the  poetic  forms  of 
love  and  religion.  ^  A  better  mastery  of  experience 
will  in  such  cases' dispel  those  hasty  conceits  by 
showing  the  fundamental  divergence  which  at  once 
manifests  itself  between  the  course  of  phenomena 
and  the  feelings  associated  with  them.  It  will 
appear  beyond  question  that  those  feelings  were 
private  fancies  merged  with  observation  in  an  un- 
digested experience.  They  indicated  nothing  in 
the  object  but  its  power  of  arousing  emotional  and 
playful  reverberations  in  the  mind.  Criticism 
will  tend  to  clear  the  world  of  such  poetic  distor- 
tion; and  what  vestiges  of  it  may  linger  will  be 
avowed  fables,  metaphors  employed  merely  in  con- 
ventional expression.  In  the  end  even  poetic 
power  will  forsake  a  discredited  falsehood :  the 
poet  himself  will  soon  prefer  to  describe  nature  in 


DISCOVERY    OF    FELLOW-MINDS  149 

natural  terms  and  to  represent  human  emotions 
in  their  pathetic  humility,  not  extended  beyond 
their  actual  sphere  nor  fantastically  uprooted  from 
their  necessary  soil  and  occasions.  He  will  sing 
the  power  of  nature  over  the  soul,  the  joys  of  the 
soul  in  the  bosom  of  nature,  the  beauty  visible  in 
things,  and  the  steady  march  of  natural  processes, 
so  rich  in  momentous  incidents  and  collocations. 
The  precision  of  such  a  picture  will  accentuate  its 
majesty,  as  precision  does  in  the  poems  of  Lucre- 
tius and  Dante,  while  its  pathos  and  dramatic 
interest  will  be  redoubled  by  its  truth. 
Case  where  it  is  A  primary  habit  producing  wide- 
not  a  faUacy.  spread  illusions  may  in  certain  cases 
become  the  source  of  rational  knowledge.  This 
possibility  will  surprise  no  one  who  has  studied 
nature  and  life  to  any  purpose.  Nature  and  life 
are  tentative  in  all  their  processes,  so  that  there 
is  nothing  exceptional  in  the  fact  that,  since  in 
crude  experience  image  and  emotion  are  inevitably 
regarded  as  constituting  a  single  event,  this  habit 
should  usually  lead  to  childish  absurdities,  but 
also,  under  special  circumstances,  to  rational 
insight  and  morality.  There  is  evidently  one  case 
in  which  the  pathetic  fallacy  is  not  fallacious,  the 
case  in  which  the  object  observed  happens  to  be  an 
animal  similar  to  the  observer  and  similarly 
affected,  as  for  instance  when  a  flock  or  herd  are 
swayed  by  panic  fear.  The  emotion  which  each, 
as  he  runs,  attributes  to  the  others  is,  as  usual,  the 
emotion  he  feels  himself;  but  this  emotion,  fear, 


150  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

is  the  same  which  in  fact  the  others  are  then  feel- 
ing. Their  aspect  thus  becomes  the  recognised 
expression  for  the  feeling  which  really  accom- 
panies it.  So  in  hand-to-hand  fighting:  the  in- 
tention and  passion  which  each  imputes  to  the 
other  is  what  he  himself  feels ;  but  the  imputation 
is  probably  just,  since  pugnacity  is  a  remarkably 
contagious  and  monotonous  passion.  It  is  awa- 
kened by  the  slightest  hostile  suggestion  and  is 
greatly  intensified  by  example  and  emulation; 
those  we  fight  against  and  those  we  fight  with 
arouse  it  concurrently  and  the  universal  battle-cry 
that  fills  the  air,  and  that  each  man  instinctively 
emits,  is  an  adequate  and  exact  symbol  for  what 
is  passing  in  all  their  souls. 

Whenever,  then,  feeling  is  attributed  to  an  ani- 
mal similar  to  the  percipient  and  similarly  em- 
ployed the  attribution  is  mutual  and  correct. 
Contagion  and  imitation  are  great  causes  of  feel- 
ing, but  in  so  far  as  they  are  its  causes  and  set 
the  pathetic  fallacy  to  work  they  forestall  and 
correct  what  is  fallacious  in  that  fallacy  and  turn 
it  into  a  vehicle  of  true  and,  as  it  were,  miraculous 
insight. 
^      ,  ^  Let    the    reader    meditate    for    a 

Knowledge 

succeeds  only  moment  upon  the  following  point :  to 
by  accident,  j^jjow  reality  is,  in  a  way,  an  impossible 
pretension,  because  knowledge  means  significant 
representation,  discourse  about  an  existence  not 
contained  in  the  knowing  thought,  and  different 
in  duration  or  locus  from  the  ideas  which  repre- 


DISC0\T:RY    of    FiSLLOW-AnNDS  151 

Bent  it.  But  if  knowledge  does  not  possess  its 
object  how  can  it  intend  it?  And  if  knowledge 
possesses  its  object,  how  can  it  be  knowledge  or 
have  any  practical,  prophetic,  or  retrospective 
value?  Consciousness  is  not  knowledge  unless 
it  indicates  or  signifies  what  actually  it  is  not. 
This  transcendence  is  what  gives  knowledge  its 
cognitive  and  useful  essence,  its  transitive  func- 
tion and  validity.  In  knowledge,  therefore,  there 
must  be  some  such  thing  as  a  justified  illusion,  an 
irrational  pretension  by  chance  fulfilled,  a  chance 
shot  hitting  the  mark.  For  dead  logic  would  stick 
at  solipsism;  yet  irrational  life,  as  it  stumbles 
along  from  moment  to  moment,  and  multiplies 
itself  in  a  thousand  centres,  is  somehow  amenable 
to  logic  and  finds  uses  for  the  reason  it  breeds. 

Now,  in  the  relation  of  a  natural  being  to  simi- 
lar beings  in  the  same  habitat  there  is  just  the 
occasion  we  require  for  introducing  a  miraculous 
transcendence  in  knowledge,  a  leap  out  of  solip- 
sism which,  though  not  prompted  by  reason,  will 
find  in  reason  a  continual  justification.  For  ter- 
tiary qualities  are  imputed  to  objects  by  psycho- 
logical or  pathological  necessity.  Something  not 
visible  in  the  object,  something  not  possibly  re- 
vealed by  any  future  examination  of  that  object, 
is  thus  united  with  it,  felt  to  be  its  core,  its  meta- 
physical truth.  Tertiary  qualities  are  emotions 
or  thoughts  present  in  the  observer  and  in  his 
rudimentary  consciousness  not  yet  connected  with 
their  proper  concomitants  and  antecedents,  not  yet 


152  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

relegated  to  his  private  mind,  nor  explained  by 
his  personal  endowment  and  situation.  To  take 
these  private  feelings  for  the  substance  of  other 
beings  is  evidently  a  gross  blunder ;  yet  this  blun- 
der, without  ceasing  to  be  one  in  point  of  method, 
ceases  to  be  one  in  point  of  fact  when  the  other 
being  happens  to  be  similar  in  nature  and  situa- 
tion to  the  mythologist  himself  and  therefore 
actually  possesses  the  very  emotions  and  thoughts 
which  lie  in  the  mythologist's  bosom  and  are  at- 
tributed by  him  to  his  fellow.  Thus  an  imaginary 
self-transcendence,  a  rash  pretension  to  grasp  an 
independent  reality  and  to  know  the  unknowable, 
may  find  itself  accidentally  rewarded.  Imagina- 
tion will  have  drawn  a  prize  in  its  lottery  and  the 
pathological  accidents  of  thought  will  have  begot- 
ten knowledge  and  right  reason.  The  inner  and 
unattainable  core  of  other  beings  will  have  been 
revealed  to  private  intuition. 
Limits  of  This  miracle  of  insight,  as  it  must 

insight.  seem  to  those  who  have  not  understood 

its  natural  and  accidental  origin,  extends  only  so 
far  as  does  the  analogy  between  the  object  and  the 
instrument  of  perception.  The  gift  of  intuition 
fails  in  proportion  as  the  observer's  bodily  habit 
differs  from  the  habit  and  body  observed.  Mis- 
understanding begins  with  constitutional  diver- 
gence and  deteriorates  rapidly  into  false  imputa- 
tions and  absurd  myths.  The  limits  of  mutual 
understanding  coincide  with  the  limits  of  similar 
strueture  and  common  occupation,  so  that  the  dis- 


DISCOVERY    OF    FELLOW-MINDS  153 

tortion  of  insight  begins  very  near  home.  It  is 
hard  to  understand  the  minds  of  children  unless 
we  retain  unusual  plasticity  and  capacity  to  play; 
men  and  women  do  not  really  understand  each 
other,  what  rules  between  them  being  not  so  much 
sympathy  as  habitual  trust,  idealisation,  or  satire ; 
foreigners'  minds  are  pure  enigmas,  and  those  at- 
tributed to  animals  are  a  grotesque  compound  of 
uEsop  and  physiology.  When  we  come  to  religion 
the  ineptitude  of  all  the  feelings  attributed  to 
nature  or  the  gods  is  so  egregious  that  a  sober 
critic  can  look  to  such  fables  only  for  a  pathetic 
expression  of  human  sentiment  and  need;  while, 
even  apart  from  the  gods,  each  religion  itself  is 
quite  unintelligible  to  infidels  who  have  never  fol- 
lowed its  worship  sympathetically  or  learned  by 
contagion  the  human  meaning  of  its  sanctions  and 
formulas.  Hence  the  stupidity  and  want  of  in- 
sight commonly  shown  in  what  calls  itself  the  his- 
tory of  religions.  We  hear,  for  instance,  that 
Greek  religion  was  frivolous,  because  its  mystic 
awe  and  momentous  practical  and  poetic  truths 
escape  the  Christian  historian  accustomed  to  a 
catechism  and  a  religious  morality;  and  similarly 
Catholic  piety  seems  to  the  Protestant  an  aesthetic 
indulgence,  a  religion  appealing  to  sense,  because 
such  is  the  only  emotion  its  externals  can  awaken 
in  him,  unused  as  he  is  to  a  supernatural  economy 
reaching  down  into  the  incidents  and  affections  of 
daily  life. 

Language  is  an  artificial  means  of  establishing 


154  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

unanimity  and  transferring  thought  from  one 
mind  to  another.  Every  symbol  or  phrase,  like 
every  gesture,  throws  the  observer  into  an  attitude 
to  which  a  certain  idea  corresponded  in  the 
speaker;  to  fall  exactly  into  the  speaker's  attitude 
is  exactly  to  understand.  Every  impediment  to 
contagion  and  imitation  in  expression  is  an  im- 
pediment to  comprehension.  For  this  reason  lan- 
guage, like  all  art,  becomes  pale  with  years ;  words 
and  figures  of  speech  lose  their  contagious  and 
suggestive  power;  the  feeling  they  once  expressed 
can  no  longer  be  restored  by  their  repetition. 
Even  the  most  inspired  verse,  which  boasts  not 
without  a  relative  justification  to  be  immortal, 
becomes  in  the  course  of  ages  a  scarcely  legible 
hieroglyphic;  the  language  it  was  written  in  dies, 
a  learned  education  and  an  imaginative  effort  are 
requisite  to  catch  even  a  vestige  of  its  original 
force.     Nothing  is  so  irrevocable  as  mind. 

Unsure  the  ebb  and  flood  of  thought, 
The  moon  comes  back,  the  spirit  not. 

Perception  of  There  is,  however,  a  wholly  differ- 
character.  gnt  and  fai  morc  positive  method  of 
reading  the  mind,  or  what  in  a  metaphorical  sense 
is  called  by  that  name.  This  method  is  to  read 
character.  Any  object  with  which  we  are  familiar 
teaches  us  to  divine  its  habits;  slight  indications, 
which  we  should  be  at  a  loss  to  enumerate  sepa- 
rately, betray  what  changes  are  going  on  and 
what  promptings  are  simmering  in  the  organism. 


DISCOVERY    OF   FELLOW-MINDS  155 

Hence  the  expression  of  a  face  or  figure ;  hence  the 
traces  of  habit  and  passion  visible  in  a  man  and 
that  indescribable  something  about  him  which  in- 
spires confidence  or  mistrust.  The  gift  of  read- 
ing character  is  partly  instinctive,  partly  a  result 
of  experience;  it  may  amount  to  foresight  and  is 
directed  not  upon  consciousness  but  upon  past  or 
eventual  action.  Habits  and  passions,  however, 
have  metaphorical  psychic  names,  names  indicat- 
ing dispositions  rather  than  particular  acts  (a  dis- 
position being  mythically  represented  as  a  sort  of 
wakeful  and  haunting  genius  waiting  to  whisper 
suggestions  in  a  man's  ear).  We  may  accord- 
ingly delude  ourselves  into  imagining  that  a  pose 
or  a  manner  which  really  indicates  habit  indicates 
feeling  instead.  In  truth  the  feeling  involved,  if 
conceived  at  all,  is  conceived  most  vaguely,  and  is 
only  a  sort  of  reverberation  or  penumbra  sur- 
rounding the  pictured  activities. 
Conduct  It  is  a  mark  of  the  connoisseur  to 

divined,  con-   ^^  ^^^^  ^^  ^^^^  character  and  habit  and 

sciousness  ig- 
nored, to  divine  at  a  glance  all  a  creature's 

potentialities.  This  sort  of  penetration  charac- 
terises the  man  with  an  eye  for  horse-flesh,  the 
dog-fancier,  and  men  and  women  of  the  world. 
It  guides  the  born  leader  in  the  judgments  he  in- 
stinctively passes  on  his  subordinates  and  enemies ; 
it  distinguishes  every  good  judge  of  human  affairs 
or  of  natural  phenomena,  who  is  quick  to  detect 
small  but  telling  indications  of  events  past  or 
brewing.     As     the     weather-prophet     reads    the 


156  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

heavens  so  the  man  of  experience  reads  other  men. 
Nothing  concerns  him  less  than  their  conscious- 
ness ;  he  can  allow  that  to  run  itself  off  when  he  is 
sure  of  their  temper  and  habits.  A  great  master 
of  affairs  is  usually  unsympathetic.  His  observa- 
tion is  not  in  the  Jeast  dramatic  or  dreamful,  he 
does  not  yield  himself  to  animal  contagion  or  re- 
enact  other  people's  inward  experience.  He  is 
too  busy  for  that,  and  too  intent  on  his  own  pur- 
poses. His  observation,  on  the  contrary,  is 
straight  calculation  and  inference,  and  it  some- 
times reaches  truths  about  people's  character  and 
destiny  which  they  themselves  are  very  far  from 
divining.  Such  apprehension  is  masterful  and 
odious  to  weaklings,  who  think  they  know  them- 
selves because  they  indulge  in  copious  soliloquy 
(which  is  the  discourse  of  brutes  and  madmen), 
but  who  really  know  nothing  of  their  own  capacity, 
situation,  or  fate. 

If  Rousseau,  for  instance,  after  writing  those 
Confessions  in  which  candour  and  ignorance  of  self 
are  equally  conspicuous,  had  heard  some  intelli- 
gent friend,  like  Hume,  draw  up  in  a  few  words 
an  account  of  their  author's  true  and  contemptible 
character,  he  would  have  been  loud  in  protesta- 
tions that  no  such  ignoble  characteristics  existed 
in  his  eloquent  consciousness ;  and  they  might  not 
have  existed  there,  because  his  consciousness  was 
a  histrionic  thing,  and  as  imperfect  an  expression 
of  his  own  nature  as  of  man's.  When  the  mind 
is  irrational  no  practical  purpose  is  served  by  stop- 


DISCOVERY    OF    FELLOW-MINDS  157 

ping  to  understand  it,  because  such  a  mind  is 
irrelevant  to  practice,  and  the  principles  that  guide 
the  man's  practice  can  be  as  well  understood  by 
eliminating  his  mind  altogether.  So  a  wise  gov- 
ernor ignores  his  subjects'  religion  or  concerns 
himself  only  with  its  economic  and  temperamental 
aspects;  if  the  real  forces  that  control  life  are 
understood,  the  symbols  that  represent  those 
forces  in  the  mind  may  be  disregarded.  But  such 
a  government,  like  that  of  the  British  in  India,  is 
more  practical  than  sympathetic.  While  wise  men 
may  endure  it  for  the  sake  of  their  material  in- 
terests, they  will  never  love  it  for  itself.  There 
is  nothing  sweeter  than  to  be  sympathised  with, 
while  nothing  requires  a  rarer  intellectual  hero- 
ism than  willingness  to  see  one's  equation  written 
out. 

Consciousness  Nevertheless  this  same  algebraic 
untrustworthy,  sense  for  character  plays  a  large  part 
in  human  friendship.  A  chief  element  in  friend- 
ship is  trust,  and  trust  is  not  to  be  acquired  by 
reproducing  consciousness  but  only  by  penetrating 
to  the  constitutional  instincts  which,  in  determin- 
ing action  and  habit,  determine  consciousness  as 
well.  Fidelity  is  not  a  property  of  ideas.  It  is 
a  virtue  possessed  pre-eminently  by  nature,  from 
the  animals  to  the  seasons  and  the  stars.  But 
fidelity  gives  friendship  its  deepest  sanctity,  and 
the  respect  we  have  for  a  man,  for  his  force,  abil- 
ity, constancy,  and  dignity,  is  no  sentiment  evoked 
by  his  floating  thoughts  but  an  assurance  founded 


158  THE   LIFE    OF   EEASON 

on  our  own  observation  that  his  conduct  and  char- 
acter are  to  be  counted  upon.  Smartness  and 
vivacity,  much  emotion  and  many  conceits,  are 
obstacles  both  to  fidelity  and  to  merit.  There  is 
a  high  worth  in  rightly  constituted  natures  inde- 
pendent of  incidental  consciousness.  It  consists 
in  that  ingrained  virtue  which  under  given  cir- 
cumstances would  insure  the  noblest  action  and 
with  that  action,  of  course,  the  noblest  sentiments 
and  ideas;  ideas  which  would  arise  spontaneously 
and  would  make  more  account  of  their  objects 
than  of  themselves. 

Metaphorical  The  exprcssion  of  habit  in  psychic 
°"'i<J-  metaphors  is  a  procedure  known  also 

to  theology.  Whenever  natural  or  moral  law  is 
declared  to  reveal  the  divine  mind,  this  mind  is 
a  set  of  formal  or  ethical  principles  rather  than 
an  imagined  consciousness,  re-enacted  dramati- 
cally. What  is  conceived  is  the  god's  operation, 
not  his  emotions.  In  this  way  God's  goodness 
becomes  a  symbol  for  the  advantages  of  life,  his 
wrath  a  symbol  for  its  dangers,  his  command- 
ments a  symbol  for  its  laws.  The  deity  spoken 
of  by  the  Stoics  had  exclusively  this  symbolic  char- 
acter; it  could  be  called  a  city — dear  City  of  Zeus 
— as  readily  as  an  intelligence.  And  that  intelli- 
gence which  ancient  and  ingenuous  philosophers 
said  they  saw  in  the  world  was  always  intelligence 
in  this  algebraic  sense,  it  was  intelligible  order. 
Nor  did  the  Hebrew  prophets,  in  their  emphatic 
political  philosophy,  seem  to  mean  much  more  by 


DISCOVERY   OF   FELLOW-MINDS  159 

Jehovah  than  a  moral  order,  a  principle  giving 
vice  and  virtue  their  appropriate  fruits. 
Summary.  Tiuo    socictj,    then,    is   limited   to 

similar  beings  living  similar  lives  and  enabled  by 
the  contagion  of  their  common  habits  and  arts  to 
attribute  to  one  another,  each  out  of  his  own  ex- 
perience, what  the  other  actually  endures.  A 
fresh  thought  may  be  communicated  to  one  who 
has  never  had  it  before,  but  only  when  the  speaker 
so  dominates  the  auditor's  mind  by  the  instru- 
mentalities he  brings  to  bear  upon  it  that  he  com- 
pels that  mind  to  reproduce  his  experience. 
Analogy  between  actions  and  bodies  is  accordingly 
the  only  test  of  valid  inference  regarding  the  ex- 
istence or  character  of  conceived  minds;  but  this 
eventual  test  is  far  from  being  the  source  of  such 
a  conception.  Its  source  is  not  inference  at  all 
but  direct  emotion  and  the  pathetic  fallacy.  In 
the  beginning,  as  in  the  end,  what  is  attributed  to 
others  is  something  directly  felt,  a  dream  dreamed 
through  and  dramatically  enacted,  but  uncritically 
attributed  to  the  object  by  whose  motions  it  is  sug- 
gested and  controlled.  In  a  single  case,  however, 
tertiary  qualities  happen  to  correspond  to  an  ex- 
perience actually  animating  the  object  to  which 
they  are  assigned.  This  is  the  case  in  which  the 
object  is  a  body  similar  in  structure  and  action  to 
the  percipient  himself,  who  assigns  to  that  body  a 
passion  he  has  caught  by  contagion  from  it  and 
by  imitation  of  its  actual  attitude.  Such  are  the 
conditions  of  intelligible  expression  and  true  com- 


160  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

munion;  beyond  these  limits  nothing  is  possible 
save  myth  and  metaphor,  or  the  algebraic  desig- 
nation of  observed  habits  under  the  name  of  moral 
dispositions. 


CHAPTER   VII 

CONCRETIONS    IN    DISCOURSE    AND    IN    EXISTENCE 

So-c  u  d  b  I^^^s  of  material  objects  ordinarily 
stract  quau-  absorb  the  human  mind,  and  their 
ties  primary,  prevalence  has  led  to  the  rash  supposi- 
tion that  ideas  of  all  other  kinds  are  posterior  to 
physical  ideas  and  drawn  from  the  latter  by  a  proc- 
ess of  abstraction.  The  table,  people  said,  was  a 
particular  and  single  reality;  its  colour,  form,  and 
material  were  parts  of  its  integral  nature,  quali- 
ties which  might  be  attended  to  separately,  per- 
haps, but  which  actually  existed  only  in  the  table 
itself.  Colour,  form,  and  material  were  therefore 
abstract  elements.  They  might  come  before  the 
mind  separately  and  be  contrasted  objects  of  at- 
tention, but  they  were  incapable  of  existing  in 
nature  except  together,  in  the  concrete  reality 
called  a  particular  thing.  Moreover,  as  the  same 
colour,  shape,  or  substance  might  be  found  in  vari- 
ous tables,  these  abstract  qualities  were  thought 
to  be  general  qualities  as  well ;  they  were  universal 
terms  which  might  be  predicated  of  many  indi- 
vidual things.  A  contrast  could  then  be  drawn 
between  these  qualities  or  ideas,  which  the  mind 
may  envisage,  and  the  concrete  reality  existing 
Vol.  L— 11  161 


162  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

beyond.  Thus  philosophy  could  reach  the  famil- 
iar maxim  of  Aristotle  that  the  particular  alone 
exists  in  nature  and  the  general  alone  in  the  mind. 
Such  language  expresses  correctly  enough  a 
secondary  conventional  stage  of  conception,  but  it 
ignores  the  primary  fictions  on  which  convention 
itself  must  rest.  Individual  physical  objects  must 
be  discovered  before  abstractions  can  be  made  from 
their  conceived  nature;  the  bird  must  be  caught 
before  it  is  plucked.  To  discover  a  physical  object 
is  to  pack  in  the  same  part  of  space,  and  fuse  in 
one  complex  body,  primary  data  like  coloured  form 
General  and     tangible     surface.     Intelligence, 

qualities  prior  observing   these   sensible   qualities   to 

to  particular  °  ^ 

things.  evolve  together,  and  to  be  controlled  at 

once  by  external  forces,  or  by  one's  own  voluntary 
motions,  identifies  them  in  their  operation 
although  they  remain  for  ever  distinct  in  their  sen- 
sible character.  A  physical  objecl:  is  accordingly 
conceived  by  fusing  or  interlacing  spatial  quali- 
ties, in  a  marner  helpful  to  practical  intelligence. 
It  is  a  far  higher  and  remoter  thing  than  the  ele- 
ments it  is  compacted  of  and  that  suggest  it ;  what 
habits  of  appearance  and  disappearance  the  latter 
may  have,  the  object  reduces  to  permanent  and 
calculable  principles.  It  is  altogether  erroneous, 
therefore,  to  view  an  object's  sensible  qualities  as 
abstractions  from  it,  seeing  they  are  its  original 
and  component  elements;  nor  can  the  sensible 
qualities  be  viewed  as  generic  notions  arising  by 
comparison  of  several  concrete  objects,  seeing  that 


CONCRETIONS    IN    DISCOURSE  163 

these  concretions  would  never  have  been  made  or 
thought  to  be  permanent,  did  they  not  express 
observed  variations  and  recurrences  in  the  sensible 
qualities  immediately  perceived  and  already  rec- 
ognised in  their  recurrence.  These  are  them- 
selves the  true  particulars.  They  are  the  first 
objects  discriminated  in  attention  and  projected 
against  the  background  of  consciousness. 

The  immediate  continuum  may  be  traversed  and 
mapped  by  two  different  methods.  The  prior  one, 
because  it  is  so  very  primitive  and  rudimentary, 
and  so  much  a  condition  of  all  mental  discourse, 
is  usually  ignored  in  psychology.  The  secondary 
method,  by  which  external  things  are  discovered, 
has  received  more  attention.  The  latter  consists 
in  the  fact  that  when  several  disparate  sensations, 
having  become  recognisable  in  their  repetitions, 
are  observed  to  come  and  go  together,  or  in  fixed 
relation  to  some  voluntary  operation  on  the  ob- 
server's part,  they  may  be  associated  by  contiguity 
and  merged  in  one  portion  of  perceived  space. 
Those  having,  like  sensations  of  touch  and  sight, 
an  essentially  spatial  character,  may  easily  be 
superposed ;  the  surface  I  see  and  that  I  touch  may 
be  identified  by  being  presented  together  and  being 
found  to  undergo  simultaneous  variations  and  to 
maintain  common  relations  to  other  perceptions. 
Thus  I  may  come  to  attribute  to  a  single  object, 
the  term  of  an  intellectual  synthesis  and  ideal  in- 
tention, my  experiences  through  all  the  senses 
within  a  certain  field  of  association,  defined  by  its 


164  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

practical  relations. ^  That  ideal  object  is  thereby 
endowed  with  as  many  qualities  and  powers  as  I 
had  associable  sensations  of  which  to  make  it  up. 
This  object  is  a  concretion  of  my  perceptions  in 
space,  so  that  the  redness,  hardness,  sweetness,  and 
roundness  of  the  apple  are  all  fused  together  in 
my  practical  regard  and  given  one  local  habita- 
tion and  one  name. 

Universais  This  kind  of  synthesis,  this  super- 

areconcre-      position  and  mixtuFc  of  images  into 

tions  in  -"^       _  _  ° 

discourse.  notious  of  physical  objects,  is  not,  how- 
ever, the  only  kind  to  which  perceptions  are  sub- 
ject. They  fall  together  by  virtue  of  their  quali- 
tative identity  even  before  their  spatial  superposi- 
tion ;  for  in  order  to  be  known  as  repeatedly  simul- 
taneous, and  associable  by  contiguity,  they  must 
be  associated  by  similarity  and  known  as  indi- 
vidually repeated.  The  various  recurrences  of  a 
sensation  must  be  recognised  as  recurrences,  and 
this  implies  the  collection  of  sensations  into  classes 
of  similars  and  the  apperception  of  a  common 
nature  in  several  data.  Now  the  more  frequent  a 
perception  is  the  harder  it  will  be  to  discriminate  in 
memory  its  past  occurrences  from  one  another,  and 
yet  the  more  readily  will  its  present  recurrence  be 
recognised  as  familiar.  The  perception  in  sense 
will  consequently  be  received  as  a  repetition  not  of 
any  single  earlier  sensation  but  of  a  familiar  and 
generic  experience.  This  experience,  a  spontaneous 
reconstruction  based  on  all  previous  sensations  of 
that  kind,  will  be  the  one  habitual  idea  with  which 


CONCRETIONS   IN   DISCOURSE  165 

recurring  sensations  will  be  henceforth  identified. 
Such  a  living  concretion  of  similars  succeeding 
one  another  in  time,  is  the  idea  of  a  nature  or 
quality,  the  universal  falsely  supposed  to  be  an 
abstraction  from  physical  objects,  which  in  truth 
are  conceived  by  putting  together  these  very  ideas 
into  a  spatial  and  permanent  system. 

Here  we  have,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  the  origin 
of  the  two  terms  most  prominent  in  human  knowl- 
edge, ideas  and  things.  Two  methods  of  concep- 
tion divide  our  attention  in  common  life;  science 
and  philosophy  develop  both,  although  often  with 
an  unjustifiable  bias  in  favour  of  one  or  the  other. 
They  are  nothing  but  the  old  principles  of  Aris- 
totelian psychology,  association  by  similarity  and 
association  by  contiguity.  Only  now,  after  logi- 
cians have  exhausted  their  ingenuity  in  criticising 
them  and  psychologists  in  applying  them,  we  may 
go  back  of  the  traditional  position  and  apply  the 
ancient  principles  at  a  deeper  stage  of  mental  life. 
^.   .,  Association  bv  similarity  is  a  fusion 

Similar  reac-  ^  '  .  . 

tions,  merged  of  imprcssious  merging  what  is  com- 
in  one  habit     ^^^  ^^  them,  Interchanging  what  is 

of  reproduc-  '  .  . 

tion,  yield  an  pcculiar.  and  cancelling  in  the  end 
"***•  what  is  incompatible;  so  that  any  ex- 

citement reaching  that  centre  revives  one  generic 
reaction  which  yields  the  idea.  These  concrete 
generalities  are  actual  feelings,  the  first  terms  in 
mental  discourse,  the  first  distinguishable  particu- 
lars in  knowledge,  and  the  first  bearers  of  names. 
Intellectual    dominion    of   the    conscious    stream 


166  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

begins  with  the  act  of  recognising  these  pervasive 
entities,  which  having  character  and  ideal  per- 
manence can  furnish  common  points  of  reference 
for  different  moments  of  discourse.  Save  for  ideas 
no  perception  could  have  significance,  or  acquire 
that  indicative  force  which  we  call  knowledge. 
For  it  would  refer  to  nothing  to  which  another 
perception  miglit  also  have  referred ;  and  so  long 
as  perceptions  have  no  common  reference,  so  long 
as  successive  moments  do  not  enrich  by  their  con- 
tributions the  same  object  of  thought,  evidently 
experience,  in  the  pregnant  sense  of  the  word,  is 
impossible.  No  fund  of  valid  ideas,  no  wisdom, 
could  in  that  case  be  acquired  by  living. 
Ideas  are  Idcas,  although  their  material  is  of 

ideal.  course    sensuous,    are    not    sensations 

nor  perceptions  iiur  objects  of  any  possible  im- 
mediate experience:  they  are  creatures  of  intelli- 
gence, goals  of  thought,  ideal  terms  which  cogi- 
tation and  action  circle  about.  As  the  centre 
of  mass  in  a  body,  while  it  may  by  chance 
coincide  with  one  or  another  of  its  atoms,  is 
no  atom  itself  and  no  material  constituent  of 
the  bulk  that  obeys  its  motion,  so  an  idea,  the 
centre  of  mass  of  a  certain  mental  system,  is  no 
material  fragment  of  that  system,  but  an  ideal 
term  of  reference  and  signification  by  allegiance 
to  which  the  details  of  consciousness  first  become 
parts  of  a  system  and  of  a  thought.  An  idea  is 
an  ideal.  It  represents  a  functional  relation  in 
the  dijffuse  existences  to  which  it  gives  a  name  and 


CONCKETIONS   IN   DISCOURSE  167 

a  rational  value.  An  idea  is  an  expression  of  life, 
and  shares  with  life  that  transitive  and  elusive 
nature  which  defies  definition  by  mere  enumera- 
tion of  its  materials.  The  peculiarity  of  life  is 
that  it  lives;  and  thought  also,  when  living,  passes 
out  of  itself  and  directs  itself  on  the  ideal,  on  the 
eventual.  It  is  an  activity.  Activity  does  not 
consist  in  velocity  of  change  but  in  constancy  of 
purpose;  in  the  conspiracy  of  many  moments  and 
many  processes  toward  one  ideal  harmony  and 
one  concomitant  ideal  result.  The  most  rudiment- 
ary apperception,  recognition,  or  expectation,  is 
already  a  case  of  representative  cognition,  of  tran- 
sitive thought  resting  in  a  permanent  essence. 
Memory  is  an  obvious  case  of  the  same  thing ;  for 
the  past,  in  its  truth,  is  a  system  of  experiences 
in  relation,  a  system  now  non-existent  and  never, 
as  a  system,  itself  experienced,  yet  confronted  in 
retrospect  and  made  the  ideal  object  and  standard 
for  all  historical  thinking. 

„  ,   ,        These     arrested     and     recognisable 

So-called  ab-  ° 

stractions  idcas,  concretions  of  similars  succeed- 
complete  facts,  -jjg  Qjjg  another  in  time,  are  not  ab- 
stractions; but  they  may  come  to  be  regarded  as 
such  after  the  other  kind  of  concretions  in  experi- 
ence, concretions  of  superposed  perceptions  in 
space,  have  become  the  leading  objects  of  atten- 
tion. The  sensuous  material  for  both  concretions 
is  the  same;  the  perception  which,  recurring  in 
different  objects  otherwise  not  retained  in  memory 
gives  the  idea  of  roundness,  is  the  same  percep- 


168  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

tion  which  helps  to  constitute  the  spatial  concre- 
tion called  the  sun.  Soundness  may  therefore  be 
carelessly  called  an  abstraction  from  the  real 
object  "  sun  " ;  whereas  the  peculiar  optical  and 
muscular  feelings  by  which  the  sense  of  roundness 
is  constituted — probably  feelings  of  gj'ration  and 
perpetual  unbroken  movement — are  much  earlier 
than  any  solar  observations;  they  are  a  self-suffi- 
cing element  in  experience  which,  by  repetition  in 
various  accidental  contests,  has  come  to  be  recog- 
nised and  named,  and  to  be  a  characteristic  by 
virtue  of  which  more  complex  objects  can  be  dis- 
tinguished and  defined.  The  idea  of  the  sun  is 
a  much  later  product,  and  the  real  sun  is  so  far 
from  being  an  original  datum  from  which  round- 
ness is  abstracted,  that  it  is  an  ulterior  and  quite 
ideal  construction,  a  spatial  concretion  into  which 
the  logical  concretion  roundness  enters  as  a  prior 
and  independent  factor.  Roundness  may  be  felt 
in  the  dark,  by  a  mere  suggestion  of  motion,  and 
is  a  complete  experience  in  itself.  When  this  rec- 
ognisable experience  happens  to  be  associated  by 
contiguity  with  other  recognisable  experiences  of 
heat,  light,  height,  and  yellowness,  and  these  vari- 
ous independent  objects  are  projected  into  the 
same  portion  of  a  real  space;  then  a  concretion 
occurs,  and  these  ideas  being  recognised  in  that  re- 
gion and  finding  a  momentary  embodiment  there, 
become  the  qualities  of  a  thing. 

A  conceived  thing  is  dpubly  a  product  of  mind, 
more  a  product  of  mind,  if  you  will,  than  an  idea. 


CONCEETIONS   IN    DISCOURSE  169 

since  ideas  arise,  so  to  speak,  by  the  mind's  in- 
ertia and  conceptions  of  things  by  its  activity. 
^. .  Ideas  are  mental  sediment ;  conceived 

Things  con-  ^ 

cretions  of  things  are  mental  growths.  A  concre- 
concretions.  j.-^^  ^j^  discourse  occuTS  hv  repetition 
and  mere  emphasis  on  a  datum,  but  a  concretion 
in  existence  requires  a  synthesis  of  disparate  ele- 
ments and  relations.  An  idea  is  nothing  but  a 
sensation  apperceived  and  rendered  cognitive,  so 
that  it  envisages  its  ovm  recognised  character  as 
its  object  and  ideal :  yellowness  is  only  some  sen- 
sation of  yellow  raised  to  the  cognitive  power  and 
employed  as  the  symbol  for  its  own  specific  essence. 
It  is  consequently  capable  of  entering  as  a  term 
into  rational  discourse  and  of  becoming  the  sub- 
ject or  predicate  of  propositions  eternally  valid. 
A  thing,  on  the  contrary,  is  discovered  only  when 
the  order  and  grouping  of  such  recurring  essences 
can  be  observed,  and  when  various  themes  and 
strains  of  experience  are  woven  together  into  elab- 
orate progressive  harmonies.  When  consciousness 
first  becomes  cognitive  it  frames  ideas;  but  when 
it  becomes  cognitive  of  causes,  that  is,  when  it 
becomes  practical,  it  perceives  things. 

Concretions  of  qualities  recurrent  in  time  and 
concretions  of  qualities  associated  in  existence  are 
alike  involved  in  daily  life  and  inextricably  in- 
grown into  ilio  r^trncture  of  reason.  In  conscious- 
ness and  for  logic,  association  by  similarity,  with 
its  aggregations  and  identifications  of  recurrences 
in  time,  is  fundamental  rather  than  association 


170  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

by  contiguity  and  its  existential   syntheses;   for 

recognition  identities  similars   perceived  in  suc- 

.     .     cession,    and    without    recognition    of 

Ideas  pnor  in       _  '  o 

the  order  of    similars  there  could  be  no  known  per- 
knowiedge,       gigtencc  of  phenomena.     But  phvsio- 

things  m  the  _  ^^  ^    '' 

order  of  logically  and  for  the  observer  associa- 

nature.  ^-^^^   |^y  contiguitv   comcs   first.     All 

instinct — without  Avhich  there  would  be  no  fixity 
or  recurrence  in  ideation — makes  movement  fol- 
low impression  in  an  immediate  way  which  for 
consciousness  becomes  a  mere  juxtaposition  of  sen- 
sations, a  juxtaposition  which  it  can  neither  ex- 
plain nor  avoid.  Yet  this  juxtaposition,  in  which 
^pleasure,  pain,  and  striving  are  prominent  factors, 
is  the  chief  stimulus  to  attention  and  spreads 
before  the  mind  that  moving  and  variegated  field 
in  which  it  learns  to  make  its  first  observations. 
Facts — the  burdens  of  successive  moments — are 
all  associated  by  contiguity,  from  the  first  facts 
of  perception  and  passion  to  the  last  facts  of  fate 
and  conscience.  We  undergo  events,  we  grow  into 
character,  by  the  subterraneous  working  of  irra- 
tional forces  that  make  their  incalculable  irrup- 
tions into  life  none  the  less  wonderfully  in  the 
revelations  of  a  man's  heart  to  himself  than  in  the 
cataclysms  of  the  world  around  him.  Nature's 
placid  procedure,  to  which  we  yield  so  willingly  in 
times  of  prosperity,  is  a  concatenation  of  states 
which  can  only  be  understood  when  it  is  made  its 
own  standard  and  law.  A  sort  of  philosophy  with- 
out wisdom  may  seek  to  subjugate  this  natural  life. 


CONCRETIONS   IN    DISCOURSE  171 

this  blind  budding  of  existence,  to  some  logical  or 
moral  necessity;  but  this  very  attempt  remains, 
perhaps,  the  most  striking  monument  to  that  irra- 
tional fatality  that  rules  affairs,  a  monument  which 
reason  itself  is  compelled  to  raise  with  unsus- 
pected irony. 

Keliance  on  external  perception,  constant  ap- 
peals to  concrete  fact  and  physical  sanctions,  have 
always  led  Ihe  mass  of  reasonable  men  to  magnify 
Aristotle's  concretions  in  existence  and  belittle 
compromise,  concretions  m  discourse.  They  are  too 
clever,  as  they  feel,  to  mistake  words  for  things. 
The  most  authoritative  thinker  on  this  subject, 
because  the  most  mature,  Aristotle  himself,  taught 
that  things  had  realit}^,  individuality,  indepen- 
dence, and  were  the  outer  cause  of  perception, 
while  general  ideas,  products  of  association  by 
similarity,  existed  only  in  the  mind.  The  pub- 
lic, pleased  at  its  ability  to  understand  this  doc- 
trine and  overlooking  the  more  incisive  part  of 
the  philosopher's  teaching,  could  go  home  com- 
forted and  believing  that  material  things  were 
primary  and  perfect  entities,  while  ideas  were  only 
abstractions,  effects  those  realities  produced  on  our 
incapable  minds.  Aristotle,  however,  had  a  juster 
view  of  general  concepts  and  made  in  the  end  the 
whole  material  universe  gravitate  around  them 
and  feel  their  influence,  though  in  a  metaphysical 
and  magic  fashion  to  which  a  more  advanced 
natural  science  need  no  longer  appeal.  While  in 
the  shock  of  life  man  was  always  coming  upon  the 


172  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

accidental  in  the  quiet  of  reflection  he  could  not 
but  recast  everything  in  ideal  moulds  and  retain 
nothing  but  eternal  natures  and  intelligible  rela- 
tions. Aristotle  conceived  that  while  the  origin 
of  knowledge  lay  in  the  impact  of  matter  upon 
sense  its  goal  was  the  comprehension  of  essences, 
and  that  while  man  was  involved  by  his  animal 
nature  in  the  accidents  of  experience  he  was  also 
by  virtue  of  his  rationality  a  participator  in  eternal 
truth.  A  substantial  justice  was  thus  done  both 
to  the  conditions  and  to  the  functions  of  human 
life,  although,  for  want  of  a  natural  history  in- 
spired by  mechanical  ideas,  this  dualism  remained 
somewhat  baffling  and  incomprehensible  in  its 
basis.  Aristotle,  being  a  true  philosopher  and  pu- 
pil of  experience,  preferred  incoherence  to  par- 
tiality. 
_     .....         Active  life  and  the  philosophy  that 

Empirical  bias  _  ^  ^_  -^ 

in  favour  of  borrows  its  conccpts  from  practice  have 
contiguity.  ^|^^g  j^^-^  ^  great  emphasis  on  asso- 
ciation by  contiguity.  Hobbes  and  Locke  made 
knowledge  of  this  kind  the  only  knowledge  of 
reality,  while  recognising  it  to  be  quite  empirical, 
tentative,  and  problematical.  It  was  a  kind  of 
acquaintance  with  fact  that  increased  with  years 
and  brought  the  mind  into  harmony  with  some- 
thing initially  alien  to  it.  Besides  this  practical 
knowledge  or  prudence  there  was  a  sort  of  verbal 
and  merely  ideal  knowledge,  a  knowledge  of  the 
naeaning  and  relation  of  abstract  terms.  In 
mathematics  and  logic  we  might  carry  out  long 


CONCRETIONS   IN   DISCOURSE  173 

trains  of  abstracted  thought  and  analyse  and 
develop  our  imaginations  ad  infinitum.  These 
speculations,  however,  were  in  the  air  or — what  for 
these  philosophers  is  much  the  same  thing — in  the 
mind;  their  applicability  and  their  relevance  to 
practical  life  and  to  objects  given  in  perception 
remained  quite  problematical,  A  self-developing 
Bcience,  a  synthetic  science  a  priori,  had  a  value 
entirely  hypothetical  and  provisional;  its  prac- 
tical truth  depended  on  the  verification  of  its  re- 
sults in  some  eventual  sensible  experience.  Asso- 
ciation was  invoked  to  explain  the  adjustment  of 
ideation  to  the  order  of  external  perception.  As- 
sociation, by  which  association  by  contiguity  was 
generally  understood,  thus  became  the  battle-cry 
of  empiricism;  if  association  by  similarity  had 
been  equally  in  mind,  the  philosophy  of  pregnant 
reason  could  also  have  adopted  the  principle  for 
its  own.  But  logicians  and  mathematicians  nat- 
urally neglect  the  psychology  of  their  own  proc- 
esses and,  accustomed  as  they  are  to  an  irrespon- 
sible and  constructive  use  of  the  intellect,  regard 
as  a  confused  and  uninspired  intruder  the  critic 
who,  by  a  retrospective  and  naturalistic  method, 
tries  to  give  them  a  little  knowledge  of  them- 
selves. 

Rational  ideas  must  arise  somehow  in  the  mind, 
and  since  they  are  not  meant  to  be  without  ap- 
lication  to  the  world  of  experience,  it  is  interest- 
ing to  discover  the  point  of  contact  between  the 
two    and    the   nature   of   their    interdependence. 


174  THE    LIFE    OP    REASON 

This  would  have  been  found  in  the  mind's  initial 
capacity  to  frame  objects  of  two  sorts,  those  com- 
pacted of  sensations  that  are  persistently  similar, 
Artifi  ■  ^^^  those  compacted  of  sensations  that 

divorce  of  logic  are  momentarily  fused.  In  empirical 
from  practice,  philosophy  the  applicability  of  logic 
and  mathematics  remains  a  miracle  or  becomes 
a  misinterpretation :  a  miracle  if  the  process  of 
nature  independently  follows  the  ifffirard  elabora- 
tion of  human  ideas;  a  misinterpretation  if  the 
bias  of  intelligence  imposes  a  priori  upon  reality 
a  character  and  order  not  inherent  in  it.  The 
mistake  of  empiricists — among  which  Kant  is  in 
this  respect  to  be  numbered — which  enabled  them 
to  disregard  this  difficulty,  was  that  they  admitted, 
beside  rational  thinking,  another  instinctive  kind 
of  wisdom  by  which  men  could  live,  a  wisdom  the 
Englishmen  called  experience  and  the  Germans 
practical  reason,  spirit,  or  will.  The  intellectual 
sciences  could  be  allowed  to  spin  themselves  out  in 
abstracted  liberty  while  man  practised  his  illogi- 
cal and  inspired  art  of  life. 

Here  we  observe  a  certain  elementary  crudity 
or  barbarism  which  the  human  spirit  often  betrays 
when  it  is  deeply  stirred.  Not  only  are  chance 
and  divination  welcomed  into  the  world  but  they 
are  reverenced  all  the  more,  like  the  wind  and  fire 
of  idolaters,  precisely  for  not  being  amenable  to 
the  petty  rules  of  human  reason.  In  truth,  how- 
ever, the  English  duality  between  prudence  and 
science  is  no  more  fundamental  than  the  German 


CONCRETIONS   IN   DISCOURSE  175 

duality  between  reason  and  understanding.*  The 
true  contrast  is  between  impulse  and  reflection, 
instinct  and  intelligence.  When  men  feel  the 
primordial  authority  of  the  animal  in  them  and 
have  little  respect  for  a  glimmering  reason  which 
they  suspect  to  be  secondary  but  cannot  discern 
to  be  ultimate,  they  readily  imagine  they  are 
appealing  to  something  higher  than  intelligence 
when  in  reality  they  are  falling  back  on  something 
deeper  and  lower.  The  rudimentary  seems  to 
them  at  such  moments  divine;  and  if  they  con- 
ceive a  Life  of  Reason  at  all  they  despise  it  as  a 
mass  of  artifices  and  conventions.  Reason  is 
indeed  not  indispensable  to  life,  nor  needful  if  liv- 
ing anyhow  be  the  sole  and  indeterminate  aim; 
as  the  existence  of  animals  and  of  most  men  suffi- 
ciently proves.  In  so  far  as  man  is  not  a  rational 
being  and  does  not  live  in  and  by  the  mind,  in  so 
far  as  his  chance  volitions  and  dreamful  ideas  roll 
by  without  mutual  representation  or  adjustment, 
in  so  far  as  his  body  takes  the  lead  and  even  his 
galvanised  action  is  a  form  of  passivity,  we  may 
truly  say  that  his  life  is  not  intellectual  and  not 

*  This  distinction,  in  one  eense,  is  Platonic :  but  Plato's 
Reason  was  distinguislied  from  understanding  (which  dealt 
with  phenomenal  experience)  because  it  was  a  moral  faculty 
defining  those  values  and  meanings  which  in  Platonic  nomen- 
clature took  the  title  of  reality.  The  German  Reason  was 
only  imagination,  substituting  a  dialectical  or  poetic  history 
of  the  world  for  its  natural  development.  German  idealism, 
accordingly,  was  not,  like  Plato's,  a  moral  philosophy  hypoB- 
tasised  but  a  false  physics  adored. 


176  THE    LIFE    OF    SEASON 

dependent  on  the  application  of  general  concepts 
to  experience ;  for  he  lives  by  instinct. 

The  Life  of  Reason,  the  comprehension  of  causes 
and  pursuit  of  aims,  begins  precisely  where  instinc- 
tive operation  ceases  to  be  merely  such  by  becom- 

Their  mutual  ^^S  COnSCioUS  of  its  purpOSCS  and  rep- 
involution,  resentative  of  its  conditions.  Logical 
forms  of  thought  impregnate  and  constitute  practi- 
cal intellect.  The  shock  of  experience  can  indeed 
correct,  disappoint,  or  inhibit  rational  expectation, 
but  it  cannot  take  its  place.  The  very  first  les- 
son that  experience  should  again  teach  us  after  our 
disappointment  would  be  a  rebirth  of  reason  in  the 
soul.  Reason  has  the  indomitable  persistence  of 
all  natural  tendencies;  it  returns  to  the  attack  as 
waves  beat  on  the  shore.  To  observe  its  defeat  is 
already  to  give  it  a  new  embodiment.  Prudence 
itself  is  a  vague  science,  and  science,  when  it  con- 
tains real  knowledge,  is  but  a  clarified  prudence, 
a  description  of  experience  and  a  guide  to  life. 
Speculative  reason,  if  it  is  not  also  practical,  is 
not  reason  at  all.  Propositions  irrelevant  to  ex- 
perience may  be  correct  in  form,  the  method  they 
are  reached  by  may  parody  scientific  method,  but 
they  cannot  be  true  in  substance,  because  they  refer 
to  nothing.  Like  music,  they  have  no  object. 
They  merely  flow,  and  please  those  whose  unat- 
tached sensibility  they  somehow  flatter. 

Hume,  in  this  respect  more  radical  and  satis- 
factory than  Kant  himself,  saw  with  perfect  clear- 
ness that  reason  was  an  ideal  expression  of  in- 


CONCKETIONS   IN   DISCOURSE  177 

stinct,  and  that  consequently  no  rational  spheres 
could  exist  other  than  the  mathematical  and  the 
empirical,  and  that  what  is  not  a  datum  must  cer- 
tainly be  a  construction.  In  establishing  his 
"  tendencies  to  feign  "  at  the  basis  of  intelligence, 
and  in  confessing  that  he  yielded  to  them  himself 
no  less  in  his  criticism  of  human  nature  than  in 
his  practical  life,  he  admitted  the  involution  of 
reason — that  unintelligible  instinct — in  all  the 
observations  and  maxims  vouchsafed  to  an  empiri- 
cist or  to  a  man.  He  veiled  his  doctrine,  however, 
in  a  somewhat  unfair  and  satirical  nomenclature, 
and  he  has  paid  the  price  of  that  indulgence 
in  personal  humour  by  incurring  the  immortal 
hatred  of  sentimentalists  who  are  too  much 
scandalised  by  his  tone  ever  to  understand  his 
principles. 

If  the  common  mistake  in  empiricism  is  not  to 
see  the  omnipresence  of  reason  in  thought,  the 
mistake  of  rationalism  is  not  to  admit  its  varia- 
bility and  dependence,  not  to  understand  its 
Rationalistic  natural  life.  Parmenides  was  the 
suicide.  Adam  of  that  race,  and  first  tasted  the 

deceptive  kind  of  knowledge  which,  promising  to 
make  man  God,  banishes  him  from  the  paradise 
of  experience.  His  sin  has  been  transmitted  to 
his  descendants,  though  hardly  in  its  magnificent 
and  simple  enormity.  "  The  whole  is  one," 
Xenophanes  had  cried,  gazing  into  heaven;  and 
that  same  sense  of  a  permeating  identity,  trans- 
lated into  rigid  and  logical  terms,  brought  his 
Vol.  I.— 12 


178  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

sublime  disciple  to  the  conviction  that  an  indis- 
tinguishable immutable  substance  was  omnipres- 
ent in  the  world.  Parmenides  carried  association 
by  similarity  to  such  lengths  that  he  arrived  at 
the  idea  of  what  alone  is  similar  in  everything, 
viz.,  the  fact  that  it  is.  Being  exists,  and  nothing 
else  does;  whereby  every  relation  and  variation 
in  experience  is  reduced  to  a  negligible  illusion, 
and  reason  loses  its  function  at  the  moment  of 
asserting  its  absolute  authority.  Notable  lesson, 
taught  us  like  so  many  others  by  the  first  experi- 
ments of  the  Greek  mind,  in  its  freedom  and  in- 
sight, a  mind  led  quickly  by  noble  self-confidence 
to  the  ultimate  goals  of  thought. 

Such  a  pitch  of  heroism  and  abstraction  has 
not  been  reached  by  any  rationalist  since.  No  one 
else  has  been  willing  to  ignore  entirely  all  the 
data  and  constructions  of  experience,  save  the 
highest  concept  reached  by  assimilations  in  that 
experience;  no  one  else  has  been  willing  to  de- 
molish all  the  scaffolding  and  all  the  stones  of  his 
edifice,  hoping  still  to  retain  the  sublime  symbol 
which  he  had  planted  on  the  summit.  Yet  all 
rationalists  have  longed  to  demolish  or  to  degrade 
some  part  of  the  substructure,  like  those  Gothic 
architects  who  wished  to  hang  the  vaults  of  their 
churches  upon  the  slenderest  possible  supports, 
abolishing  and  turning  into  painted  crystal  all  the 
dead  walls  of  the  building.  So  experience  and  its 
crowning  conceptions  were  to  rest  wholly  on  a 
skeleton  of  general  natures,  physical  forces  being 


CONCRETIONS    IN    DISCOURSE  179 

assimilated  to  logical  terms,  and  concepts  gained 
by  identification  of  similars  taking  the  place  of 
those  gained  by  grouping  disparate  things  in  their 
historical  conjunctions.  These  contiguous  sensa- 
tions, which  occasionally  exemplify  the  logical 
contrasts  in  ideas  and  give  them  incidental  exist- 
ence, were  either  ignored  altogether  and  dismissed 
as  unmeaning,  or  admitted  merely  as  illusions. 
The  eye  was  to  be  trained  to  pass  from  that  parti- 
coloured chaos  to  the  firm  lines  and  permanent 
divisions  that  were  supposed  to  sustain  it  and 
frame  it  in. 

Eationalism  is  a  kind  of  builder's  bias  which 
the  impartial  public  cannot  share;  for  the  dead 
walls  and  glass  screens  which  may  have  no 
function  in  supporting  the  roof  are  yet  as 
needful  as  the  roof  itself  to  shelter  and  beauty. 
So  the  incidental  filling  of  experience  which  re- 
mains unclassified  under  logical  categories  retains 
all  its  primary  reality  and  importance.  The  out- 
lines of  it  emphasised  by  logic,  though  they  may 
be  the  essential  vehicle  of  our  most  soaring 
thoughts,  are  only  a  method  and  a  style  of  archi- 
tecture. They  neither  absorb  the  whole  material 
of  life  nor  monopolise  its  values.  And  as  each 
material  imposes  upon  the  builder's  ingenuity  a 
different  type  of  construction,  and  stone,  wood, 
and  iron  must  be  treated  on  different  structural 
principles,  so  logical  methods  of  comprehension, 
spontaneous  though  they  be  in  their  mental  origin, 
must  prove  themselves  fitted  to  the  natural  order 


180  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

and  affinity  of  the  facts.*  Nor  is  there  in  this 
necessity  any  violence  to  the  spontaneity  of  reason : 
for  reason  also  has  manifold  forms,  and  the  acci- 
dents of  experience  are  more  than  matched  in 
variety  by  the  multiplicity  of  categories.  Here 
one  principle  of  order  and  there  another  shoots 
into  the  mind,  which  breeds  more  genera  and  spe- 
cies than  the  most  fertile  terrestrial  slime  can 
breed  individuals. 
Complement-       Language,  then,  with  the  logic  im- 

ary  character  |3e(J(Jg(J  jjj  jf  is  a  rcpositorv  of  tcrmS 
of  essence  and  x  ^ 

existence.  formed  by  identifying  successive  per- 
ceptions, as  the  external  world  is  a  repository  of 
objects  conceived  by  superposing  perceptions  that 
exist  together.  Being  formed  on  different  prin- 
ciples these  two  orders  of  conception — the  logical 

*  This  natural  order  and  aflBnity  is  something  imputed  to 
the  ultimate  object  of  thought — the  reality — by  the  last  act  of 
judgment  assuming  its  own  truth.  It  is,  of  course,  not 
observable  by  consciousness  before  the  first  experiment  in 
comprehension  has  been  made;  the  act  of  comprehension 
which  first  imposes  on  the  sensuous  material  some  subjective 
category  is  the  first  to  arrive  at  the  notion  of  an  objective 
order.  The  historian,  however,  has  a  well-tried  and  mature 
conception  of  the  natural  order  arrived  at  after  many  such 
experiments  in  comprehension.  From  the  vantage-ground 
of  this  latest  hypothesis,  he  surveys  the  attempts  others  have 
made  to  understand  events  and  compares  them  with  the  ob- 
jective order  which  he  believes  himself  to  have  discovered. 
This  observation  is  made  here  lest  the  reader  should  confuse 
the  natural  order,  imagined  to  exist  before  any  application 
of  human  categories,  with  the  last  conception  of  that  order 
attained  by  the  pliilosopher.  The  latter  is  but  faith,  the 
former  is  faith's  ideal  object. 


CONCRETIONS    IN    DISCOURSE  181 

and  the  physical — do  not  coincide,  and  the  attempt 
to  fuse  them  into  one  system  of  demonstrable 
reality  or  moral  physics  is  doomed  to  failure  by 
the  very  nature  of  the  terms  compared.  When  the 
Eleatics  proved  the  impossibility — i.e.,  the  inex- 
pressibility — of  motion,  or  when  Kant  and  his  fol- 
lowers proved  the  unreal  character  of  all  objects 
of  experience  and  of  all  natural  knowledge,  their 
task  was  made  easy  by  the  native  diversity 
between  the  concretions  in  existence  which  were 
the  object  of  their  thought  and  the  concretions  in 
discourse  which  were  its  measure.  The  two  do 
not  fit;  and  intrenched  as  these  philosophers  were 
in  the  forms  of  logic  they  compelled  themselves 
to  reject  as  unthinkable  everything  not  fully  ex- 
pressible in  those  particular  forms.  Thus  they 
took  their  revenge  upon  the  vulgar  who,  being  busy 
chiefly  with  material  things  and  dwelling  in  an 
atmosphere  of  sensuous  images,  call  unreal  and 
abstract  every  product  of  logical  construction 
or  reflective  analysis.  These  logical  products, 
however,  are  not  really  abstract,  but,  as  we  have 
seen,  concretions  arrived  at  by  a  different  method 
than  that  which  results  in  material  conceptions. 
Whereas  the  conception  of  a  thing  is  a  local  con- 
glomerate of  several  simultaneous  sensations,  log- 
ical entity  is  a  homogeneous  revival  in  memory 
of  similar  sensations  temporally  distinct. 

Thus  the  many  armed  with  prejudice  and  the 
few  armed  with  logic  fight  an  eternal  battle, 
the   logician   charging   the   physical   world   with 


182  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

unintelligibility  and  the  man  of  conunon-sense 
charging  the  logical  world  with  abstractness  and 
unreality.  The  former  view  is  the  more  profound, 
since  association  by  similarity  is  the  more  elemen- 
tary and  gives  constancy  to  meanings;  while  the 
latter  view  is  the  more  practical,  since  association 
by  contiguity  alone  informs  the  mind  about  the 
mechanical  sequence  of  its  own  experience. 
Neither  principle  can  be  dispensed  with,  and  each 
errs  only  in  denouncing  the  other  and  wishing  to 
be  omnivorous,  as  if  on  the  one  hand  logic  could 
make  anybody  understand  the  history  of  events  and 
the  conjunction  of  objects,  or  on  the  other  hand 
as  if  cognitive  and  moral  processes  could  have  any 
other  terms  than  constant  and  ideal  natures.  The 
namable  essence  of  things  or  the  standard  of  val- 
ues must  always  be  an  ideal  figment;  existence 
must  always  be  an  empirical  fact.  The  former 
remains  always  remote  from  natural  existence  and 
the  latter  irreducible  to  a  logical  principle.* 

*  For  the  sake  of  simplicity  only  such  ideas  as  precede 
conceptions  of  things  have  been  mentioned  here.  After 
things  are  discovered,  however,  they  may  be  used  as  terms 
in  a  second  ideal  synthesis  and  a  concretion  in  discourse  on 
a  higher  plane  may  be  composed  out  of  sustained  concre- 
tions in  existence.  Proper  names  are  such  secondary  con- 
cretions in  discourse.  "  Venice  "  is  a  term  covering  many 
successive  aspects  and  conditions,  not  distinguished  in  fancy, 
belonging  to  an  object  existing  continuously  in  space  and 
time.  Each  of  these  states  of  Venice  constitutes  a  natural 
object,  a  concretion  in  existence,  and  is  again  analysable 
into  a  mass  of  fused  but  recognisable  qualities — light, 
motion,  beauty — each  of  which  was  an  original  concretion  in 


CONCRETIONS   IN    DISCOURSE  183 

discourse,  a  primordial  term  in  experience.  A  quality  is 
recognised  by  its  own  idea  or  permanent  nature,  a  thing  by 
its  constituent  qualities,  and  an  embodied  spirit  by  fusion 
into  an  ideal  essence  of  the  constant  characters  possessed  by 
a  thing.  To  raise  natural  objects  into  historic  entities  it  is 
necessary  to  repeat  upon  a  higher  plane  that  concretion  in 
discourse  by  which  sensations  were  raised  to  ideas.  When 
familiar  objects  attain  this  ideal  character  they  have  become 
poetical  and  achieved  a  sort  of  personality.  They  then 
possess  a  spiritual  status.  Thus  sensuous  experience  is 
solidified  into  logical  terms,  these  into  ideas  of  things,  and 
these,  recast  and  smelted  again  in  imagination,  into  forms  of 
spirit. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

ON   THE    RELATIVE    VALUE    OF    THINGS    AND    IDEAS 

Moraitoneof  ThosG  wlio  look  back  upon  the  his- 
rSTrom'  ^^^^  ^^  Opinion  for  many  centuries 
their  logical  commonly  feel,  by  a  vague  but  pro- 
pnncjpie.  found  instiuct,  that  certain  conse- 
crated doctrines  have  an  inherent  dignity  and 
spirituality,  while  other  speculative  tendencies  and 
other  vocabularies  seem  wedded  to  all  that  is 
ignoble  and  shallow.  So  fundamental  is  this 
moral  tone  in  philosophy  that  people  are  usually 
more  firmly  convinced  that  their  opinions  are 
precious  than  that  they  are  true.  They  may  avow, 
in  reflective  moments,  that  they  may  be  in 
error,  seeing  that  thinkers  of  no  less  repute 
have  maintained  opposite  opinions,  but  they  are 
commonly  absolutely  sure  that  if  their  own  views 
could  be  generally  accepted,  it  would  be  a  boon 
to  mankind,  that  in  fact  the  moral  interests  of 
the  race  are  bound  up,  not  with  discovering  what 
may  chance  to  be  true,  but  with  discovering  the 
truth  to  have  a  particular  complexion.  This  pre- 
dominant trust  in  moral  judgments  is  in  some 
cases  conscious  and  avowed,  so  that  philosophers 
invite  the  world  to  embrace  tenets  for  which  no 

184 


VALUE    OF    THINGS    AND    IDEAS         185 

evidence  is  offered  but  that  they  chime  in  with 
current  aspirations  or  traditional  bias.  Thus  the 
substance  of  things  hoped  for  becomes,  even  in 
philosophy,  the  evidence  of  things  not  seen. 

Such  faith  is  indeed  profoundly  human  and  has 
accompanied  the  mind  in  all  its  gropings  and  dis- 
coveries; preference  being  the  primary  principle 
of  discrimination  and  attention.  Reason  in  her 
earliest  manifestations  already  discovered  her  affin- 
ities and  incapacities,  and  loaded  the  ideas  she 
framed  with  friendliness  or  hostility.  It  is  not 
strange  that  her  latest  constructions  should  inherit 
this  relation  to  the  will ;  and  we  shall  see  that  the 
moral  tone  and  affinity  of  metaphysical  systems 
corresponds  exactly  with  the  primary  function 
belonging  to  that  type  of  idea  on  which  they  are 
based.  Idealistic  systems,  still  cultivating  con- 
cretions in  discourse,  study  the  first  conditions  of 
knowledge  and  the  last  interests  of  life ;  material- 
istic systems,  still  emphasising  concretions  in  ex- 
istence, describe  causal  relations,  and  the  habits  of 
nature.  Thus  the  spiritual  value  of  various  philos- 
ophies rests  in  the  last  instance  on  the  kind  of 
good  which  originally  attached  the  mind  to  that 
habit  and  plane  of  ideation. 

We  have  said  that  perceptions  must  be  recog- 
nised before  they  can  be  associated  by  contiguity, 
and  that  consequently  the  fusion  of  temporally 
diffused  experiences  must  precede  their  local 
fusion  into  material  objects.  It  might  be  urged 
in    opposition    to    this    statement    that    concrete 


186  THE    LIFE    OF    SEASON 

objects  can  be  recognised  in  practice  before  their 
general  qualities  have  been  distinguished  in  dis- 
Concretions  course.  Eecognition  may  be  instinct- 
in  discourse  ive,  that  is,  bascd  on  the  repetition  of 
Btinctive  re-  ^  ^^It  reaction  or  emotion,  rather  than 
actions.  on  any  memory  of  a  former  occasion 

on  which  the  same  perception  occurred.  Such  an 
objection  seems  to  be  well  grounded,  for  it  is  in- 
stinctive adjustments  and  suggested  action  that 
give  cognitive  value  to  sensation  and  endow  it 
with  that  transitive  force  which  makes  it  con- 
sciously representative  of  what  is  past,  future,  or 
absent.  If  practical  instinct  did  not  stretch  what 
is  given  into  what  is  meant,  reason  could  never 
recognise  the  datum  for  a  copy  of  an  ideal  object. 
This  description  of  the  case  involves  an  appli- 
cation or  extension  of  our  theory  rather  than  an 
argument  against  it.  For  where  recognition  is 
instinctive  and  a  familiar  action  is  performed  with 
absent-minded  confidence  and  without  attend- 
ing to  the  indications  that  justify  that  action, 
there  is  in  an  eminent  degree  a  qualitative  con- 
cretion in  experience.  Present  impressions  are 
merged  so  completely  in  structural  survivals  of 
the  past  that  instead  of  arousing  any  ideas  dis- 
tinct enough  to  be  objectified  they  merely  stimu- 
late the  inner  sense,  remain  imbedded  in  the  gen- 
eral feeling  of  motion  or  life,  and  constitute  in 
fact  a  heightened  sentiment  of  pure  vitality  and 
Idealism  freedom.  For  the  lowest  and  vaguest 
rudimentary,    of    concrctions    in    discourse   are    the 


VALUE    OF    THINGS    AND   IDEAS         187 

ideas  of  self  and  of  an  embosoming  external  being, 
with  the  felt  continuity  of  both;  what  Fichte 
would  call  the  Ego,  the  Non-Ego,  and  Life. 
Where  no  particular  events  are  recognised  there 
is  still  a  feeling  of  continuous  existence.  We 
trail  after  us  from  our  whole  past  some  sense  of 
the  continuous  energy  and  movement-  both  of  our 
passionate  fancies  and  of  the  phantasmagoria 
capriciously  at  work  beyond.  An  ignorant  mind 
believes  itself  omniscient  and  omnipotent;  those 
impulses  in  itself  which  really  represent  the  iner- 
tia and  unspent  momentum  of  its  last  dream  it 
regards  as  the  creative  forces  of  nature. 

The  first  lines  of  cleavage  and  the  first  recognis- 
able bulks  at  which  attention  is  arrested  are  in  truth 
those  shadowy  Fichtean  divisions :  such  are  the 
rude  beginnings  of  logical  architecture.  In  its 
inability  to  descry  anything  definite  and  fixed,  for 
want  of  an  acquired  empirical  background  and  a 
distinct  memory,  the  mind  flounders  forward  in  a 
dream  full  of  prophecies  and  wayward  identifica- 
tions. The  world  possesses  as  yet  in  its  regard 
only  the  superficial  forms  that  appear  in  revery, 
it  has  no  hidden  machinery,  no  third  dimension 
in  which  unobserved  and  perpetual  operations  are 
going  on.  Its  only  terms,  in  a  word,  are  concre- 
tions in  discourse,  ideas  combined  in  their  aesthetic 
and  logical  harmonies,  not  in  their  habitual  and 
efficacious  conjunctions.  The  disorder  of  such 
experience  is  still  a  spontaneous  disorder;  it  has 
not  discovered  how  calculable  are  its  unpremedi- 


188  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

tated  shocks.  The  cataclysms  that  occur  seem  to 
have  only  ideal  grounds  and  only  dramatic  mean- 
ing. Though  the  dream  may  have  its  terrors  and 
degenerate  at  moments  into  a  nightmare,  it  has 
still  infinite  plasticity  and  buoyancy.  What  per- 
ceptions are  retained  merge  in  those  haunting  and 
friendly  presences,  they  have  an  intelligible  and 
congenial  character  because  they  appear  as  parts 
and  effluences  of  an  inner  fiction,  evolving  accord- 
ing to  the  barbaric  prosody  of  an  almost  infant 
mind. 

This  is  the  fairy-land  of  idealism  where  only 
the  miraculous  seems  a  matter  of  course  and  every 
hint  of  what  is  purely  natural  is  disregarded, 
for  the  truly  natural  still  seems  artificial,  dead, 
and  remote.  New  and  disconcerting  facts,  which 
intrude  themselves  inopportunely  into  the  story, 
chill  the  currents  of  spontaneous  imagination  and 
are  rejected  as  long  as  possible  for  being  alien  and 
perverse.  Perceptions,  on  the  contrary,  which  can 
be  attached  to  the  old  presences  as  confirmations 
or  corollaries,  become  at  once  parts  of  the  warp 
and  woof  of  what  we  call  ourselves.  They  seem 
of  the  very  substance  of  spirit,  obeying  a  vital 
momentum  and  flowing  from  the  inmost  principle 
of  being;  and  they  are  so  much  akin  to  human 
presumptions  that  they  pass  for  manifestations  of 
necessary  truth.  Thus  the  demonstrations  of  geom- 
etry being  but  the  intent  explication  of  a  long- 
consolidated  ideal  concretion  which  we  call  space, 
are  welcomed  by  the  mind  as  in  a  sense  familiar 


VALUE    OF    THINGS    AND    IDEAS         189 

and  as  revelations  of  a  truth  implicit  in  the  soul, 
so  that  Plato  could  plausibly  take  them  for  rec- 
ollections of  prenatal  wisdom.  But  a  rocket  that 
bursts  into  sparks  of  a  dozen  colours,  even  if  ex- 
pected, is  expected  with  anxiety  and  observed  with 
surprise;  it  assaults  the  senses  at  an  incalculable 
moment  with  a  sensation  individual  and  new. 
The  exciting  tension  and  lively  stimulus  may 
please  in  their  way,  yet  the  badge  of  the  acciden- 
tal and  unmeaning  adheres  to  the  thing.  It  is  a 
trivial  experience  and  one  quickly  forgotten.  The 
shock  is  superficial  and  were  it  repeated  would 
soon  fatigue.  We  should  retire  with  relief  into 
darkness  and  silence,  to  our  permanent  and 
rational  thoughts. 

Naturalism  ^^  is  a  remarkable  fact,  which  may 

^<*-  easily  be  misinterpreted,  that  while  all 

the  benefits  and  pleasures  of  life  seem  to  be  asso- 
ciated with  external  things,  and  all  certain  knowl- 
edge seems  to  describe  material  laws,  yet  a  deified 
nature  has  generally  inspired  a  religion  of  melan- 
choly. Why  should  the  only  intelligible  philoso- 
phy seem  to  defeat  reason  and  the  chief  means  of 
benefiting  mankind  seem  to  blast  our  best  hopes? 
Whence  this  profound  aversion  to  so  beautiful  and 
fruitful  a  universe  ?  Whence  this  persistent  search 
for  invisible  regions  and  powers  and  for  meta- 
physical explanations  that  can  explain  nothing, 
while  nature's  voice  without  and  within  man  cries 
aloud  to  him  to  look,  act,  and  enjoy  ?  And  when 
someone,  in  protest  against  such  senseless  oracu- 


190  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

lar  prejudices,  has  actually  embraced  the  life  and 
faith  of  nature  and  taught  others  to  look  to  the 
natural  world  for  all  motives  and  sanctions,  ex- 
pecting thus  to  refresh  and  marvellously  to  invig- 
orate human  life,  why  have  those  innocent  hopes 
failed  so  miserably?  Why  is  that  sensuous  opti- 
mism we  may  call  Greek,  or  that  industrial  opti- 
mism we  may  call  American,  such  a  thin  disguise 
for  despair?  Why  does  each  melt  away  and 
become  a  mockery  at  the  first  approach  of  reflec- 
tion? Why  has  man's  conscience  in  the  end  in- 
variably rebelled  against  naturalism  and  reverted 
in  some  form  or  other  to  a  cultus  of  the  unseen? 
_.        ,  , .         We   may   answer   in   the   words   of 

The  soul  akm  _  •' 

to  the  eternal  Saint  Paul :  becausc  things  seen  are 
and  ideal.  temporal  and  things  not  seen  are  eter- 
nal. And  we  may  add,  remembering  our  analysis 
of  the  objects  inhabiting  the  mind,  that  the  eter- 
nal is  the  truly  human,  that  which  is  akin  to  the 
first  indispensable  products  of  intelligence,  which 
arise  by  the  fusion  of  successive  images  in  dis- 
course, and  transcend  the  particular  in  time,  peo- 
pling the  mind  with  permanent  and  recognisable 
objects,  and  strengthening  it  with  a  synthetic, 
dramatic  apprehension  of  itself  and  its  own  experi- 
ence. Concretion  in  existence,  on  the  contrary, 
yields  essentially  detached  and  empirical  unities, 
foreign  to  mind  in  spite  of  their  order,  and  unin- 
telligible in  spite  of  their  clearness.  Eeason  fails 
to  assimilate  in  them  precisely  that  which  makes 
them  real,  namely,  their  presence  here  and  now. 


VALUE    OF    THINGS   AND    IDEAS         191 

in  this  order  and  number.  The  form  and  qual- 
ity of  them  we  can  retain,  domesticate,  and  weave 
into  the  texture  of  reflection,  but  their  existence 
and  individuality  remain  a  datum  of  sense  need- 
ing to  be  verified  anew  at  every  moment  and 
actually  receiving  continual  verification  or  dis- 
,  proof  while  we  live  in  this  world. 

"  This  world  "  we  call  it,  not  without  justifiable 
pathos,  for  many  other  worlds  are  conceivable 
and  if  discovered  might  prove  more  rational  and 
intelligible  and  more  akin  to  the  soiil  than  this 
strange  universe  which  man  has  hitherto  always 
looked  upon  with  increasing  astonishment.  The 
materials  of  experience  are  no  sooner  in  hand 
than  they  are  transformed  by  intelligence,  re- 
duced to  those  permanent  presences,  those  na- 
tures and  relations,  which  alone  can  live  in 
discourse.  Those  materials,  rearranged  into  the 
abstract  summaries  we  call  history  or  science, 
or  pieced  out  into  the  reconstructions  and  ex- 
tensions we  call  poetry  or  religion,  furnish  us 
with  ideas  of  as  many  dream-worlds  as  we 
please,  all  nearer  to  reason's  ideal  than  is  the 
actual  chaos  of  perceptual  experience,  and  some 
nearer  to  the  heart's  desire.  When  an  em- 
pirical philosophy,  therefore,  calls  us  back  from 
the  irresponsible  flights  of  imagination  to  the 
shock  of  sense  and  tries  to  remind  us  that  in  this 
alone  we  touch  existence  and  come  upon  fact,  we 
feel  dispossessed  of  our  nature  and  cramped  in 
our  life.     The  actuality  possessed  by  external  ex- 


192  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

perience  cannot  make  up  for  its  instability,  nor 
the  applicability  of  scientific  principles  for  their 
hypothetical  character.  The  dependence  upon 
sense,  which  we  are  reduced  to  when  we  consider 
the  world  of  existences,  becomes  a  too  plain  hint 
of  our  essential  impotence  and  mortality,  while 
the  play  of  logical  fancy,  though  it  remain  in- 
evitable, is  saddened  by  a  consciousness  of  its  own 
insignificance. 

That  dignity,  then,  which  inheres  in  logical  ideas 
and  their  aflfinity  to  moral  enthusiasm,  springs 
from  their  congruity  with  the  primary  habits  of 
intelligence  and  idealisation.  The  soul  or  self  or 
personality,  which  in  sophisticated  social  life  is 
so  much  the  centre  of  passion  and  concern,  is  itself 
an  idea,  a  concretion  in  discourse;  and  the  level 
on  which  it  swims  comes  to  be,  by  association  and 
affinity,  the  region  of  all  the  more  vivid  and  mas- 
sive human  interests.  The  pleasures  which  lie 
Her  beneath  it  are  ignored,  and  the  ideals 

inexperience,  which  lie  abovc  it  are  not  perceived. 
Aversion  to  an  empirical  or  naturalistic  philoso- 
phy accordingly  expresses  a  sort  of  logical  patriot- 
ism and  attachment  to  homespun  ideas.  The 
actual  is  too  remote  and  unfriendly  to  the 
dreamer;  to  understand  it  he  has  to  learn  a  foreign 
tongue,  which  his  native  prejudice  imagines  to  be 
unmeaning  and  unpoetical.  The  truth  is,  how- 
ever, that  nature's  language  is  too  rich  for  man; 
and  the  discomfort  he  feels  when  he  is  compelled 
to  use  it   merely  marks  his  lack   of  education. 


VALUE  OF  THINGS  AND  IDEAS    193 

There  is  nothing  cheaper  than  idealism.  It  can 
be  had  Ijy  merely  not  observing  the  ineptitude  of 
our  chance  prejudices,  and  by  declaring  that  the 
first  rhymes  that  have  struck  our  ear  are  the 
eternal  and  necessary  harmonies  of  the  world. 
Piatonism  The  thiukcr^s  bias  is  naturally  favour- 

spontaneous,  able  to  logical  ideas.  The  man  of  re- 
flection will  attribute,  as  far  as  possible,  validity 
and  reality  to  these  alone.  Piatonism  remains  the 
classic  instance  of  this  way  of  thinking.  Living 
in  an  age  of  rhetoric,  with  an  education  that  dealt 
with  nothing  but  ideal  entities,  verbal,  moral,  or 
mathematical,  Plato  saw  in  concretions  in  dis- 
course the  true  elements  of  being.  Definable 
meanings,  being  the  terms  of  thought,  must  also, 
he  fancied,  be  the  constituents  of  reality.  And 
with  that  directness  and  audacity  which  was  pos- 
sible to  the  ancients,  and  of  which  Pythagoreans 
and  Eleatics  had  already  given  brilliant  examples, 
he  set  up  these  terms  of  discourse,  like  the  Pythag- 
orean numbers,  for  absolute  and  eternal  entities, 
existing  before  all  things,  revealed  in  all  things, 
giving  the  cosmic  artificer  his  models  and  the 
creature  his  goal.  By  some  inexplicable  necessity 
the  creation  had  taken  place.  The  ideas  had  mul- 
tiplied themselves  in  a  flux  of  innumerable  images 
which  could  be  recognised  by  their  resemblance  to 
their  originals,  but  were  at  once  cancelled  and  ex- 
punged by  virtue  of  their  essential  inadequacy. 
What  sounds  are  to  words  and  words  to  thoughts, 
that  was  a  thing  to  its  idea. 
Vol.  L-18 


194  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

Plato,  however,  retained  the  moral  and  signifi- 
cant essence  of  his  ideas,  and  while  he  made  them 
.  ,     ideal  absolutes,  fixed  meanings  antece- 

Its  essential  '  °  _ 

fidelity  to  the  dent  to  their  changing  expressions, 
ideal.  never  dreamed  that  they  could  be  nat- 

ural existences,  or  psychological  beings.  In  an 
original  thinker,  in  one  who  really  thinks  and 
does  not  merely  argue,  to  call  a  thing  super- 
natural, or  spiritual,  or  intelligible  is  to  declare 
that  it  is  no  thing  at  all,  no  existence  actual 
or  possible,  but  a  value,  a  term  of  thought,  a 
merely  ideal  principle ;  and  the  more  its  reality  in 
such  a  sense  is  insisted  on  the  more  its  incommen- 
surability with  brute  existence  is  asserted.  To  ex- 
press this  ideal  reality  myth  is  the  natural  vehicle ; 
a  vehicle  Plato  could  avail  himself  of  all  the  more 
freely  that  he  inherited  a  religion  still  plastic  and 
conscious  of  its  poetic  essence,  and  did  not  have  to 
struggle,  like  his  modern  disciples,  with  the  ar- 
rested childishness  of  minds  that  for  a  hundred 
generations  have  learned  their  metaphysics  in  the 
cradle.  His  ideas,  although  their  natural  basis 
was  ignored,  were  accordingly  always  ideal;  they 
always  represented  meanings  and  functions  and 
were  never  degraded  from  the  moral  to  the  physi- 
cal sphere.  The  counterpart  of  this  genuine  ideal- 
ity was  that  the  theory  retained  its  moral  force  and 
did  not  degenerate  into  a  bewildered  and  idola- 
trous pantheism.  Plato  conceived  the  soul's  des- 
tiny to  be  her  emancipation  from  those  material 
things  which  in  this  illogical  apparition  were  so 


VALUE    OF    THINGS    AND    IDEAS         195 

alien  to  her  essence.  She  should  return,  after  her 
baflBing  and  stupefying  intercourse  with  the  world 
of  sense  and  accident,  into  the  native  heaven  of  her 
ideas.  For  animal  desires  were  no  less  illusory^ 
and  yet  no  less  significant,  than  sensuous  percep- 
tions. They  engaged  man  in  the  pursuit  of  the 
good  and  taught  him,  through  disappointment,  to 
look  for  it  only  in  those  satisfactions  which  can 
be  permanent  and  perfect.  Love,  like  intelli- 
gence, must  rise  from  appearance  to  reality,  and 
rest  in  that  divine  world  which  is  the  fulfilment 
of  the  human. 

A  geometrician  does  a  good  service  when  he  de- 
clares and  explicates  the  nature  of  the  triangle, 
an  object  suggested  by  many  casual  and  recurring 
sensations.  His  service  is  not  less  real,  even  if  less 
obvious,  when  he  arrests  some  fundamental  con- 
cretion in  discourse,  and  formulates  the  first  prin- 
ciples of  logic.  Mastering  such  definitions,  sinking 
into  the  dry  life  of  such  forms,  he  may  spin  out 
and  develop  indefinitely,  in  the  freedom  of  his  irre- 
sponsible logic,  their  implications  and  congruous 
extensions,  opening  by  his  demonstration  a  depth 
of  knowledge  which  we  should  otherwise  never 
have  discovered  in  ourselves.  But  if  the  geometer 
Equal  rights  ^ad  a  fanatical  zeal  and  forbade  us  to 
of  empiricism,  consider  space  and  the  triangles  it  con- 
tains otherwise  than  as  his  own  ideal  science  con- 
siders them :  forbade  us,  for  instance,  to  inquire 
how  we  came  to  perceive  those  triangles  or  that 
space;  what  organs  and  senses  conspired  in  fur- 


196  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

nishing  the  idea  of  them;  what  material  objects 
show  that  character,  and  how  they  came  to  offer 
themselves  to  our  observation — then  surely  the 
geometer  would  qualify  his  service  with  a  distinct 
injury  and  while  he  opened  our  eyes  to  one  fas- 
cinating vista  would  tend  to  blind  them  to  others 
no  less  temj^ting  and  beautiful.  For  the  natural- 
ist and  psychologist  have  also  their  rights  and  can 
tell  us  things  well  worth  knowing;  nor  will  any 
theory  they  may  possibly  propose  concerning  the 
origin  of  spatial  ideas  and  their  material  embodi- 
ments ever  invalidate  the  demonstrations  of  geom- 
etry. These,  in  their  hypothetical  sphere,  are  per- 
fectly autonomous  and  self-generating,  and  their 
applicability  to  experience  will  hold  so  long  as  the 
initial  images  they  are  applied  to  continue  to 
abound  in  perception. 

If  we  awoke  to-morrow  in  a  world  containing 
nothing  but  music,  geometry  would  indeed  lose 
its  relevance  to  our  future  experience ;  but  it  would 
keep  its  ideal  cogency,  and  become  again  a  living 
language  if  any  spatial  objects  should  ever  re- 
appear in  sense. 

The  history  of  such  reappearances — natural  his- 
tory— is  meantime  a  good  subject  for  observation 
and  experiment.  Chronicler  and  critic  can  always 
approach  experience  with  a  method  complementary 
to  the  deductive  methods  pursued  in  mathematics 
and  logic:  instead  of  developing  the  import  of  a 
definition,  he  can  investigate  its  origin  and  de- 
scribe its  relation  to  other  disparate  phenomena. 


VALUE    OF    THINGS    AND   IDEAS         197 

The  mathematician  develops  the  import  of  given 
ideas;  the  psychologist  investigates  their  origin 
and  describes  their  relation  to  the  rest  of  human 
experience.  So  the  prophet  develops  the  import 
of  his  trance^  and  the  theologian  the  import  of  the 
prophecy:  which  prevents  not  the  historian  from 
coming  later  and  showing  the  origin,  the  growth, 
and  the  possible  function  of  that  maniacal  sort 
of  wisdom.  True,  the  theologian  commonly 
dreads  a  critic  more  than  does  the  geometer,  but 
this  happens  only  because  the  theologian  has  prob- 
ably not  developed  the  import  of  his  facts  with 
any  austerity  or  clearness,  but  has  distorted  that 
ideal  interpretation  with  all  sorts  of  concessions 
and  side-glances  at  other  tenets  to  which  he  is 
already  pledged,  so  that  he  justly  fears,  when  his 
methods  are  exposed,  that  the  religious  heart  will 
be  alienated  from  him  and  his  conclusions  be  left 
with  no  foothold  in  human  nature.  If  he  had  not 
been  guilty  of  such  misrepresentation,  no  history 
or  criticism  that  reviewed  his  construction  would 
do  anything  but  recommend  it  to  all  those  who 
found  in  themselves  the  primary  religious  facts 
and  religious  faculties  which  that  construction 
had  faithfully  interpreted  in  its  ideal  deductions 
and  extensions.  All  who  perceived  the  facts 
would  thus  learn  their  import ;  and  theology  would 
reveal  to  the  soul  her  natural  religion,  just  as 
Euclid  reveals  to  architects  and  navigators  the 
structure  of  natural  space,  so  that  they  value  his 
demonstrations  not   only   for   their   hypothetical 


198  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

cogency  but  for  their  practical  relevance  and 
truth. 

Now,  like  the  geometer  and  ingenuous  theo- 
logian that  he  was,  Plato  developed  the  import  of 
moral  and  logical  experience.  Even  his  followers, 
though  they  might  give  rein  to  narrower  and  more 
fantastic  enthusiasms,  often  unveiled  secrets,  hid- 
den in  the  oracular  intent  of  the  heart,  which 
might  never  have  been  disclosed  but  for  their  les- 
sons. But  with  a  zeal  unbecoming  so  well 
grounded  a  philosophy  they  turned  their  backs 
upon  the  rest  of  wisdom,  they  disparaged  the  evi- 
dence of  sense,  they  grew  hot  against  the  ultimate 
practical  sanctions  furnished  by  impulse  and 
pleasure,  they  proscribed  beauty  in  art  (where 
Plato  had  proscribed  chiefly  what  to  a  fine  sensi- 
bility is  meretricious  ugliness),  and  in  a  word  they 
sought  to  abolish  all  human  activities  other  than 
the  one  pre-eminent  in  themselves.  In  revenge 
...       .for  their  hostility  the  great  world  has 

Logic  depend-  _  ^  ° 

ent  on  fact  for  never  given  them  more  than  a  distrust- 
its  importance,  f^j  admiration  and,  confronted  daily 
by  the  evident  truths  they  denied,  has  encouraged 
itself  to  forget  the  truths  they  asserted.  For  they 
had  the  bias  of  reflection  and  man  is  born  to  do 
more  than  reflect;  they  attributed  reality  and 
validity  only  to  logical  ideas,  and  man  finds  other 
objects  continually  thrusting  themselves  before  his 
eyes,  claiming  his  affection  and  controlling  his 
fortunes. 

The  most   legitimate   constructions  of  reason 


VALUE    OF    THINGS   AND    IDEAS         199 

soon  become  merely  speculative,  soon  pass,  I 
mean,  beyond  the  sphere  of  practical  applica- 
tion; and  the  man  of  affairs,  adjusting  himself 
at  every  turn  to  the  opaque  brutality  of  fact,  loses 
his  respect  for  the  higher  reaches  of  logic  and  for- 
gets that  his  recognition  of  facts  themselves  is  an 
application  of  logical  principles.  In  his  youth, 
perhaps,  he  pursued  metaphysics,  which  are  the 
love-affairs  of  the  understanding;  now  he  is  wed- 
ded to  convention  and  seeks  in  the  passion  he  calls 
business  or  in  the  habit  he  calls  duty  some  substi- 
tute for  natural  happiness.  He  fears  to  question 
the  value  of  his  life,  having  found  that  such  ques- 
tioning adds  nothing  to  his  powers ;  and  he  thinks 
the  mariner  would  die  of  old  age  in  port  who 
should  wait  for  reason  to  justify  his  voyage. 
Reason  is  indeed  like  the  sad  Iphigenia  whom  her 
royal  father,  the  Will,  must  sacrifice  before  any 
wind  can  fill  his  sails.  The  emanation  of  all 
things  from  the  One  involves  not  only  the  incar- 
nation but  the  crucifixion  of  the  Logos.  Reason 
must  be  eclipsed  by  its  supposed  expressions,  and 
can  only  shine  in  a  darkness  which  does  not  com- 
prehend it.  For  reason  is  essentially  hypotheti- 
cal and  subsidiary,  and  can  never  constitute  what 
it  expresses  in  man,  nor  what  it  recognises  in 
nature. 

and  for  its  ^^  logic  should  rcfuse  to  make  this 

subsistence,  initial  self-sacrifice  and  to  subordinate 
itself  to  impulse  and  fact,  it  would  immediately 
become  irrational  and  forfeit  its  own  justification. 


200  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

For  it  exists  by  virtue  of  a  human  impulse  and'  in 
answer  to  a  human  need.  To  ask  a  man,  in  the 
satisfaction  of  a  metaphysical  passion,  to  forego 
every  other  good  is  to  render  him  fanatical  and  to 
shut  his  eyes  daily  to  the  sun  in  order  that  he  may 
see  better  by  the  star-light.  The  radical  fault  of 
rationalism  is  not  any  incidental  error  committed 
in  its  deductions,  although  such  necessarily  abound 
in  every  human  system.  Its  great  original  sin  is 
its  denial  of  its  own  basis  and  its  refusal  to  occupy 
its  due  place  in  the  world,  an  ignorant  fear  of 
being  invalidated  by  its  history  and  dishonoured, 
as  it  were,  if  its  ancestry  is  hinted  at.  Only 
bastards  should  fear  that  fate,  and  criticism  would 
indeed  be  fatal  to  a  bastard  philosophy,  to  one  that 
does  not  spring  from  practical  reason  and  has  no 
roots  in  life.  But  those  products  of  reason  which 
arise  by  reflection  on  fact,  and  those  spontaneous 
and  demonstrable  systems  of  ideas  which  can  be 
verified  in  experience,  and  thus  serve  to  render  the 
facts  calculable  and  articulate,  will  lose  nothing  of 
their  lustre  by  discovering  their  lineage.  So  the 
idea  of  nature  remains  true  after  psychology  has 
analysed  its  origin,  and  not  only  true,  but  beau- 
tiful and  beneficent.  For  unlike  many  negligible 
products  of  speculative  fancy  it  is  woven  out  of 
recurrent  perceptions  into  a  hypothetical  cause 
from  which  further  perceptions  can  be  deduced  as 
they  are  actually  experienced. 

Such   a   mechanism    once   discovered   confirms 
itself  at  every  breath  we  draw,  and  surrounds 


VALUE    OF    THINGS    AND    IDEAS         201 

every  object  in  history  and  nature  with  infinite 
and  true  suggestions,  making  it  doubly  inter- 
esting, fruitful,  and  potent  over  the  mind.  The 
naturalist  accordingly  welcomes  criticism  because 
his  constructions,  though  no  less  hypothetical 
and  speculative  than  the  idealist's  dreams,  are 
such  legitimate  and  fruitful  fictions  that  they 
are  obvious  truths.  For  truth,  at  the  intelligi- 
ble level  where  it  arises, .  means  not  sensible 
fact,  but  valid  ideation,  verified  hypothesis,  and 
inevitable,  stable  inference.  If  the  idealist  fears 
and  deprecates  any  theory  of  his  own  origin 
and  function,  he  is  only  obeying  the  instinct  of 
self-preservation;  for  he  knows  very  well  that  his 
past  will  not  bear  examination.  He  is  heir  to  every 
superstition  and  by  profession  an  apologist;  his 
deepest  vocation  is  to  rescue,  by  some  logical  tour 
de  force,  what  spontaneously  he  himself  would  have 
taken  for  a  consecrated  error.  Now  history  and 
criticism  would  involve,  as  he  instinctively  per- 
ceives, the  reduction  of  his  doctrines  to  their  prag- 
matic value,  to  their  ideal  significance  for  real  life. 
But  he  detests  any  admission  of  relativity  in  his 
doctrines,  all  the  more  because  he  cannot  avow  his 
reasons  for  detesting  it;  and  zeal,  here  as  in  so 
many  cases,  becomes  the  cover  and  evidence  of  a 
bad  conscience.  Bigotry  and  craft,  with  a  rhetori- 
cal vilification  of  enemies,  then  come  to  reinforce 
in  the  prophet  that  natural  limitation  of  his  in- 
terests which  turns  his  face  away  from  history  and 
criticism;  until  his  system,  in  its  monstrous  un- 


202  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

reality  and  disingenuousness,  becomes  intolerable, 
and  provokes  a  general  revolt  in  which  too  often 
the  truth  of  it  is  buried  with  the  error  in  a  com- 
mon oblivion. 

Reason  and  I^  idealism  is  Intrenched  in  the  very 
docility.  structure  of  human  reason,  empiricism 

represents  all  those  energies  of  the  external  uni- 
verse which,  as  Spinoza  says,  must  inj5nitely  ex- 
ceed the  energies  of  man.  If  meditation  breeds 
science,  wisdom  comes  by  disillusion,  even  on  the 
subject  of  science  itself.  Docility  to  the  facts 
makes  the  sanity  of  science.  Eeason  is  only  half 
grown  and  not  really  distinguishable  from  imag- 
ination so  long  as  she  cannot  check  and  recast  her 
own  processes  wherever  they  render  the  moulds 
of  thought  unfit  for  their  subject-matter.  Docil- 
ity is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  deepest  condition  of 
reason's  existence ;  for  if  a  form  of  mental  synthe- 
sis were  by  chance  developed  which  was  incapable 
of  appropriating  the  data  of  sense,  these  data  could 
not  be  remembered  or  introduced  at  all  into  a 
growing  and  cumulative  experience.  Sensations 
would  leave  no  memorial;  while  logical  thoughts 
would  play  idly,  like  so  many  parasites  in  the 
mind,  and  ultimately  languish  and  die  of  inani- 
tion. To  be  nourished  and  employed,  intelligence 
must  have  developed  such  structure  and  habits  as 
will  enable  it  to  assimilate  what  food  comes  in  its 
way;  so  that  the  persistence  of  any  intellectual 
habit  is  a  proof  that  it  has  some  applicability, 
however  partial,  to  the  facts  of  sentience. 


VALUE    OF    THINGS    AND   IDEAS         203 

AppUcabie  This   applicability,   the   prerequisite 

c?a'rified^°'*  of  significant  thought,  is  also  its 
experience.  eventual  test ;  and  the  gathering  of 
new  experiences,  the  consciousness  of  more  and 
more  facts  crowding  into  the  memory  and  demand- 
ing co-ordination,  is  at  once  the  presentation  to 
reason  of  her  legitimate  problem  and  a  proof  that 
she  is  already  at  work.  It  is  a  presentation  of  her 
problem,  because  reason  is  not  a  faculty  of  dreams 
but  a  method  in  living;  and  by  facing  the  flux  of 
sensations  and  impulses  that  constitute  mortal  life 
with  the  gift  of  ideal  construction  and  the  aspira- 
tion toward  eternal  goods,  she  is  only  doing  her 
duty  and  manifesting  what  she  is.  To  accumu- 
late facts,  moreover,  is  in  itself  to  prove  that 
rational  activity  is  already  awakened,  because  a 
consciousness  of  multitudinous  accidents  diversi- 
fying experience  involves  a  wide  scope  in  memory, 
good  methods  of  classification,  and  keen  senses,  so 
that  all  working  together  they  may  collect  many 
observations.  Memory  and  all  its  instruments  are 
embodiments,  on  a  modest  scale,  of  rational  activi- 
ties which  in  theory  and  speculation  reappear  upon 
a  higher  level.  The  expansion  of  the  mind  in 
point  of  retentiveness  and  wealth  of  images  is  as 
much  an  advance  in  knowledge  as  is  its  develop- 
ment in  point  of  organisation.  The  structure  may 
be  widened  at  the  base  as  well  as  raised  toward 
its  ideal  summit,  and  while  a  mass  of  information 
imperfectly  digested  leaves  something  still  for  in- 
telligence to  do,  it  shows  at  the  same  time  how 
much  intelligence  has  done  already. 


204  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

The  function  of  reason  is  to  dominate  experi- 
ence; and  obviously  openness  to  new  impressions 
is  no  less  necessary  to  that  end  than  is  the  pos- 
session of  principles  by  which  new  impressions 
may  be  interpreted. 


CHAPTER   IX 

HOW  THOUGHT  IS  PRACTICAL 

Functional  Nothing  is  more  natural  or   more 

mind""^^  congruous  with  all  the  analogies  of  ex- 
body,  perience  than  that  animals  should  feel 
and  think.  The  relation  of  mind  to  body,  of  rea- 
son to  nature,  seems  to  be  actually  this:  when 
bodies  have  reached  a  certain  complexity  and  vital 
equilibrium,  a  sense  begins  to  inhabit  them  which 
is  focussed  upon  the  preservation  of  that  body  and 
on  its  reproduction.  This  sense,  as  it  becomes 
reflective  and  expressive  of  physical  welfare,  points 
more  and  more  to  its  own  persistence  and  har- 
mony, and  generates  the  Life  of  Reason.  Nature 
is  reason's  basis  and  theme;  reason  is  nature's 
consciousness ;  and,  from  the  point  of  view  of  that 
consciousness  when  it  has  arisen,  reason  is  also 
nature's  justification  and  goal. 

To  separate  things  so  closely  bound  together  as 
are  mind  and  body,  reason  and  nature,  is  conse- 
quently a  violent  and  artificial  divorce,  and  a 
man  of  judgment  will  instinctively  discredit  any 
philosophy  in  which  it  is  decreed.  But  to  avoid 
divorce  it  is  well  first  to  avoid  unnatural  unions, 
and  not  to  attribute  to  our  two  elements,  which 

305 


206  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

must  be  partners  for  life,  relations  repugnant  to 
their  respective  natures  and  offices.  Now  the  body 
is  an  instrument,  the  mind  its  function,  the  wit- 
ness and  reward  of  its  operation.  Mind  is  the 
body's  entelechy,  a  value  which  accrues  to  the 
body  when  it  has  reached  a  certain  perfection,  of 
which  it  would  be  a  pity,  so  to  speak,  that  it 
should  remain  unconscious ;  so  that  while  the  body 
feeds  the  mind  the  mind  perfects  the  body,  lifting 
it  and  all  its  natural  relations  and  impulses  into 
the  moral  world,  into  the  sphere  of  interests  and 
ideas. 

No  connection  could  be  closer  than  this  re- 
ciprocal involution,  as  nature  and  life  reveal  it; 
but  the  connection  is  natural,  not  dialectical. 
The  union  will  be  denaturalised  and,  so  far  as 
philosophy  goes,  actually  destroyed,  if  we  seek  to 
carry  it  on  into  logical  equivalence.  If  we  isolate 
the  terms  mind  and  body  and  study  the  inward 
implications  of  each  apart,  we  shall  never  discover 
the  other.  That  matter  cannot,  by  transposition 
of  its  particles,  hecome  what  we  call  consciousness, 
is  an  admitted  truth;  that  mind  cannot  become  its 
own  occasions  or  determine  its  own  march,  though 
it  be  a  truth  not  recognised  by  all  philosophers,  is 
in  itself  no  less  obvious.  Matter,  dialectically 
studied,  makes  consciousness  seem  a  superfluous 
and  unaccountable  addendum;  mind,  studied  in 
the  same  way,  makes  nature  an  embarrassing  idea, 
a  figment  which  ought  to  be  subservient  to  con- 
scious aims  and  perfectly  transparent,  but  which 


HOW   THOUGHT   IS    PRACTICAL         207 

remains  opaque  and  overwhelming.  In  order  to 
escape  these  sophistications,  it  suffices  to  revert  to 
immediate  observation  and  state  the  question  in 
its  proper  terms :  nature  lives,  and  perception  is  a 
private  echo  and  response  to  ambient  motions. 
The  soul  is  the  voice  of  the  body's  interests;  in 
watching  them  a  man  defines  the  world  that  sus- 
tains him  and  that  conditions  all  his  satisfactions. 
In  discerning  his  origin  he  christens  Nature  by  the 
eloquent  name  of  mother,  under  which  title  she 
enters  the  universe  of  discourse.  Simultaneously 
he  discerns  his  own  existence  and  marks  off  the 
inner  region  of  his  dreams.  And  it  behooves  him 
not  to  obliterate  these  discoveries.  By  trying  to 
give  his  mind  false  points  of  attachment  in  nature 
he  would  disfigure  not  only  nature  but  also  that 
reason  which  is  so  much  the  essence  of  his  life. 
They  form  one  Consciousness,  then,  is  the  expression 
natural  life,  of  bodily  life  and  the  seat  of  all  its 
values.  Its  place  in  the  natural  world  is  like  that 
of  its  own  ideal  products,  art,  religion,  or  science ; 
it  translates  natural  relations  into  synthetic  and 
ideal  symbols  by  which  things  are  interpreted  with 
reference  to  the  interests  of  consciousness  itself. 
This  representation  is  also  an  existence  and  has  its 
place  along  with  all  other  existences  in  the  bosom 
of  nature.  In  this  sense  its  connection  with  its 
organs,  and  with  all  that  affects  the  body  or  that 
the  body  affects,  is  a  natural  connection.  If  the 
word  cause  did  not  suggest  dialectical  bonds  we 
might  innocently  say  that  thought  was  a  link  in 


208  THE    LIFE    OF   REASON 

the  chain  of  natural  causes.  It  is  at  least  a  link  in 
the  chain  of  natural  events ;  for  it  has  determinate 
antecedents  in  the  brain  and  senses  and  determi- 
nate consequents  in  actions  and  words.  But  this 
dependence  and  this  efficacy  have  nothing  logical 
about  them;  they  are  habitual  collocations  in  the 
world,  like  lightning  and  thunder.  A  more  mi- 
nute inspection  of  psycho-physical  processes,  were 
it  practicable,  would  doubtless  disclose  undreamed 
of  complexities  and  harmonies  in  them ;  the  mathe- 
matical and  dynamic  relations  of  stimulus  and 
sensation  might  perhaps  be  formulated  with  pre- 
cision. But  the  terms  used  in  the  equation,  their 
quality  and  inward  habit,  would  always  remain 
data  which  the  naturalist  would  have  to  assume 
after  having  learned  them  by  inspection.  Move- 
ment could  never  be  deduced  dialectically  or 
graphically  from  thought  nor  thought  from  move- 
ment. Indeed  no  natural  relation  is  in  a  different 
case.  Neither  gravity,  nor  chemical  reaction,  nor 
life  and  reproduction,  nor  time,  space,  and  motion 
themselves  are  logically  deducible,  nor  intelligible 
in  terms  of  their  limits.  The  phenomena  have  to 
be  accepted  at  their  face  value  and  allowed  to 
retain  a  certain  empirical  complexity;  otherwise 
the  seed  of  all  science  is  sterilised  and  calculation 
cannot  proceed  for  want  of  discernible  and  preg- 
nant elements. 

How  fine  nature's  habits  may  be,  where  repeti- 
tion begins,  and  down  to  what  depth  a  mathe- 
matical treatment  can  penetrate,  is  a  question  for 


HOW   THOUGHT   IS   PKACTICAL  209 

the  natural  sciences  to  solve.  Whether  conscious- 
ness, for  instance,  accompanies  vegetative  life,  or 
even  all  motion,  is  a  point  to  be  decided  solely  by 
empirical  analogy.  When  the  exact  physical  con- 
ditions of  thought  are  discovered  in  man,  we  may 
infer  how  far  thought  is  diffused  through  the  uni- 
verse, for  it  will  be  coextensive  with  the  condi- 
tions it  will  have  been  shown  to  have.  Now,  in 
a  very  rough  way,  we  know  already  what  these  con- 
ditions are.  They  are  first  the  existence  of  an 
organic  body  and  then  its  possession  of  adaptable 
instincts,  of  instincts  that  can  be  modified  by  ex- 
perience. This  capacity  is  what  an  observer  calls 
intelligence;  docility  is  the  observable  half  of  rea- 
son. When  an  animal  winces  at  a  blow  and  read- 
justs his  pose,  we  say  he  feels;  and  we  say  he 
thinks  when  we  see  him  brooding  over  his  impres- 
sions, and  find  him  launching  into  a  new  course 
of  action  after  a  silent  decoction  of  his  potential 
impulses.  Conversely,  when  observation  covers 
both  the  mental  and  the  physical  process,  that  is, 
in  our  own  experience,  we  find  that  felt  impulses, 
the  conceived  objects  for  which  they  make,  and  the 
values  they  determine  are  all  correlated  with  ani- 
mal instincts  and  external  impressions.  A  desire 
is  the  inward  sign  of  a  physical  proclivity  to  act, 
an  image  in  sense  is  the  sign  in  most  cases  of  some 
material  object  in  the  environment  and  always, 
we  may  presume,  of  some  cerebral  change.  The 
brain  seems  to  simmer  like  a  caldron  in  which 
all  sorts  of  matters  are  perpetually  transforming 
Vol.  I.— 14 


210  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

themselves  into  all  sorts  of  shapes.  When  this 
cerebral  reorganisation  is  pertinent  to  the  external 
situation  and  renders  the  man,  when  he  resumes 
action,  more  a  master  of  his  world,  the  accompany- 
ing thought  is  said  to  be  practical;  for  it  brings  a 
consciousness  of  power  and  an  earnest  of  success. 
Cerebral  processes  are  of  course  largely  hypo- 
thetical. Theory  suggests  their  existence,  and  ex- 
perience can  verify  that  theory  only  in  an  indirect 
and  imperfect  manner.  The  addition  of  a  physi- 
cal substratum  to  all  thinking  is  only  a  scientific 
expedient,  a  hypothesis  expressing  the  faith  that 
nature  is  mechanically  intelligible  even  beyond 
the  reaches  of  minute  verification.  The  accom- 
panying consciousness,  on  the  other  hand,  is  some- 
thing intimately  felt  by  each  man  in  his  own  per- 
son; it  is  a  portion  of  crude  and  immediate 
experience.  That  it  accompanies  changes  in  his 
body  and  in  the  world  is  not  an  inference  for  him 
but  a  datum.  But  when  crude  experience  is 
somewhat  refined  and  the  soul,  at  first  mingled 
with  every  image,  finds  that  it  inhabits  only  her 
private  body,  to  whose  fortunes  hers  are  altogether 
wedded,  we  begin  to  imagine  that  we  know  the 
cosmos  at  large  better  than  the  spirit ;  for  beyond 
the  narrow  limits  of  our  own  person  only  the  mate- 
rial phase  of  things  is  open  to  our  observation. 
To  add  a  mental  phase  to  every  part  and  motion 
of  the  cosmos  is  then  seen  to  be  an  audacious 
fancy.  It  violates  all  empirical  analogy,  for  the 
phenomenon  which  feeling  accompanies  in  crude 


HOW   THOUGHT   IS   PRACTICAL         211 

experience  is  not  mere   material   existence,  but 
reactive  organisation  and  docility. 
Artifices  The  limits  set  to  observation,  how- 

invoived  in      q-^q^,  render  the  mental  and  material 

separating  ' 

them.  spheres  far  from  coincident,  and  even 

in  a  rough  way  mutually  supplementary,  so  that 
human  reflection  has  fallen  into  a  habit  of  inter- 
larding them.  The  world,  instead  of  being  a  living 
body,  a  natural  system  with  moral  functions,  has 
seemed  to  be  a  bisectible  hybrid,  half  material  and 
half  mental,  the  clumsy  conjunction  of  an  autom- 
aton with  a  ghost.  These  phases,  taken  in  their 
abstraction,  as  they  first  forced  themselves  on 
human  attention,  have  been  taken  for  independent 
and  separable  facts.  Experience,  remaining  in 
both  provinces  quite  sensuous  and  superficial,  has 
accordingly  been  allowed  to  link  this  purely  men- 
tal event  with  that  purely  mechanical  one.  The 
linkage  is  practically  not  deceptive,  because  men- 
tal transformations  are  indeed  signs  of  changes 
in  bodies ;  and  so  long  as  a  cause  is  defined  merely 
as  a  sign,  mental  and  physical  changes  may  truly 
be  said  to  cause  one  another.  But  so  soon  as  this 
form  of  augury  tries  to  overcome  its  crude  empiri- 
cism and  to  establish  phenomenal  laws,  the  men- 
tal factor  has  to  fall  out  of  the  efficient  process 
and  be  represented  there  by  what,  upon  accurate 
examination,  it  is  seen  to  be  really  the  sign  of — I 
mean  by  some  physiological  event. 

If  philosophers  of  the  Cartesian  school  had  taken 
to  heart,  as  the  German  transcendentalists  did,  the 


212  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

cogito  ergo  sum  of  their  master,  and  had  considered 
that  a  physical  world  is,  for  knowledge,  nothing 
but  an  instrument  to  explain  sensations  and  their 
order,  they  might  have  expected  this  collapse  of 
half  their  metaphysics  at  the  approach  of  their 
positive  science:  for  if  mental  existence  was  to 
be  kept  standing  only  by  its  supposed  causal 
efficacy  nothing  could  prevent  the  whole  world 
from  becoming  presently  a  hete-macliine.  Psychic 
events  have  no  links  save  through  their  organs 
and  their  objects;  the  function  of  the  material 
world  is,  indeed,  precisely  to  supply  their  linkage. 
The  internal  relations  of  ideas,  on  the  other  hand, 
are  dialectical;  their  realm  is  eternal  and  abso- 
lutely irrelevant  to  the  march  of  events.  If  we 
must  speak,  therefore,  of  causal  relations  between 
mind  and  body,  we  should  say  that  matter  is  the 
pervasive  cause  of  mind's  distribution,  and  mind 
the  pervasive  cause  of  matter's  discovery  and 
value.  To  ask  for  an  efficient  cause,  to  trace  back 
a  force  or  investigate  origins,  is  to  have  already 
turned  one's  face  in  the  direction  of  matter  and 
mechanical  laws:  no  success  in  that  undertaking 
can  fail  to  be  a  triumph  for  materialism.  To  ask 
for  a  justification,  on  the  other  hand,  is  to  turn  no 
less  resolutely  in  the  direction  of  ideal  results  and 
actualities  from  which  instrumentality  and  further 
use  have  been  eliminated.  Spirit  is  useless,  being 
the  end  of  things :  but  it  is  not  vain,  since  it  alone 
rescues  all  else  from  vanity.  It  is  called  prac- 
tical when  it  is  prophetic  of  its  own  better  fulfil- 


HOW    THOUGHT    IS    PRACTICAL  213 

ments,  which  is  the  case  whenever  forces  are  being 
turned  to  good  uses,  whenever  an  organism  is  ex- 
ploring its  relations  and  putting  forth  new  ten- 
tacles with  which  to  grasp  the  world. 
Consciousness  We  saw  in  the  beginning  that  the 
expresses  vital  exigences  of  bodily  life  gave  conscious- 

equilibnum  °  .;  o 

and  dociuty.  ness  its  first  articulation.  A  bodily 
feat,  like  nutrition  or  reproduction,  is  celebrated 
by  a  festival  in  the  mind,  and  consciousness  is  a 
sort  of  ritual  solemnising  by  prayer,  jubilation,  or 
mourning,  the  chief  episodes  in  the  body's  fort- 
unes. The  organs,  by  their  structure,  select  the 
impressions  possible  to  them  from  the  divers  in- 
fluences abroad  in  the  world,  all  of  which,  if  ani- 
mal organisms  had  learned  to  feed  upon  them, 
might  plausibly  have  offered  a  basis  for  sensation. 
Every  instinct  or  habitual  impulse  further  selects 
from  the  passing  bodily  affections  those  that  are 
pertinent  to  its  own  operation  and  which  conse- 
quently adhere  to  it  and  modify  its  reactive 
machinery.  Prevalent  and  notable  sensations  are 
therefore  signs,  presumably  marking  the  presence 
of  objects  important  for  the  body's  welfare  or  for 
the  execution  of  its  predestined  offices.  So  that 
not  only  are  the  soul's  aims  transcripts  of  the 
body's  tendencies,  but  all  ideas  are  grafted  upon 
the  interplay  of  these  tendencies  with  environing 
forces.  Early  images  hover  about  primary  wants 
as  highest  conceptions  do  about  ultimate  achieve- 
ments. 

Thought  is  essentially  practical  in  the  sense 


214  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

that  but  for  thought  no  motion  would  be  an  action, 

no  change  a  progress;  but  thought  is  in  no  way 

instrumental  or  servile;  it  is  an  ex- 
its worthless-  .  t      i  ■  /•  .  i       i 

nessasacause  pencnce  realised,  not  a   force  to   be 
and  value  as     uscd.     That  Same  spontaneity  in  na- 

an  expression.     .  i  •   i     i  .     i  i  i 

ture  which  has  suggested  a  good  must 
be  trusted  to  fulfil  it.  If  we  look  fairly  at  the 
actual  resources  of  our  minds  we  perceive  that 
we  are  as  little  informed  concerning  the  means 
and  processes  of  action  as  concerning  the  rea- 
son why  our  motives  move  us.  To  execute  the 
simplest  intention  we  must  rely  on  fate:  our 
own  acts  are  mysteries  to  us.  Do  I  know  how 
I  open  my  eyes  or  how  I  walk  down  stairs?  Is 
it  the  supervising  wisdom  of  consciousness  that 
guides  me  in  these  acts?  Is  it  the  mind  that 
controls  the  bewildered  body  and  points  out 
the  way  to  physical  habits  uncertain  of  their 
affinities?  Or  is  it  not  much  rather  automatic 
inward  machinery  that  executes  the  marvellous 
work,  while  the  mind  catches  here  and  there 
some  glimpse  of  the  operation,  now  with  de- 
light and  adhesion,  now  with  impotent  rebel- 
lion ?  When  impulses  work  themselves  out  unim- 
peded we  say  we  act;  when  they  are  thwarted  we 
say  we  are  acted  upon;  but  in  neither  case  do  we 
in  the  least  understand  the  natural  history  of 
what  is  occurring.  The  mind  at  best  vaguely 
forecasts  the  result  of  action:  a  schematic  verbal 
sense  of  the  end  to  be  accomplished  possibly  hovers 
in  consciousness  while  the  act  is  being  performed ; 


HOW    THOUGHT    IS    PRACTICAL  215 

but  this  premonition  is  itself  the  sense  of  a  proc- 
ess already  present  and  betrays  the  tendency  at 
work;  it  can  obviously  give  no  aid  or  direction  to 
the  unknown  mechanical  process  that  produced  it 
and  that  must  realise  its  own  prophecy,  if  that 
prophecy  is  to  be  realised  at  all. 

That  such  an  unknown  mechanism  exists,  and 
is  adequate  to  explain  every  so-called  decision,  is 
indeed  a  hypothesis  far  outrunning  detailed  veri- 
fication, although  conceived  by  legitimate  analogy 
with  whatever  is  known  about  natural  processes; 
but  that  the  mind  is  not  the  source  of  itself  or  its 
own  transformations  is  a  matter  of  present  experi- 
ence; for  the  world  is  an  unaccountable  datum, 
in  its  existence,  in  its  laws,  and  in  its  incidents. 
The  highest  hopes  of  science  and  morality  look 
only  to  discovering  those  laws  and  bringing  one 
set  of  incidents — facts  of  perception — into  har- 
mony with  another  set — facts  of  preference.  This 
hoped-for  issue,  if  it  comes,  must  come  about  in 
the  mind;  but  the  mind  cannot  be  its  cause  since, 
by  hypothesis,  it  does  not  possess  the  ideas  it  seeks 
nor  has  power  to  realise  the  harmonies  it  desider- 
ates. These  have  to  be  waited  for  and  begged  of 
destiny ;  human  will,  not  controlling  its  basis,  can- 
not possibly  control  its  effects.  Its  existence  and 
its  efforts  have  at  best  the  value  of  a  good  omen. 
They  show  in  what  direction  natural  forces  are 
moving  in  so  far  as  they  are  embodied  in  given 
men. 

Men,  like  all  things  else  in  the  world,  are  prod- 


216  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

nets   and   vehicles  of  natural   energy,  and  their 

operation  counts.    But  their  conscious  will,  in  its 

moral  assertiveness,  is  merely  a  sisrn 
Thought's  ^  •'^  =■ 

march  auto-     of  that  energy  and  of  that  will's  event- 
matic  and       ^^j    fortuncs.      Dramatic    terror    and 

thereby  im- 
plicated in  dramatic  humour  hoth  depend  on  con- 
events,  trasting  the  natural  pregnancy  of  a 
passion  with  its  conscious  intent.  Everything  in 
human  life  is  ominous,  even  the  voluntary  acts. 
We  cannot,  by  taking  thought,  add  a  cubit  to  our 
stature,  but  we  may  build  up  a  world  without 
meaning  it.  Man  is  as  full  of  potentiality  as  he  is 
of  impotence.  A  will  that  represents  many  active 
forces,  and  is  skilful  in  divination  and  augury, 
may  long  boast  to  be  almighty  without  being  con- 
tradicted by  the  event. 

That  thought  is  not  self-directive  appears  best 
in  the  most  immaterial  processes.  In  strife 
against  external  forces  men,  being  ignorant  of 
their  deeper  selves,  attribute  the  obvious  effects  of 
their  action  to  their  chance  ideas;  but  when  the 
process  is  wholly  internal  the  real  factors  are  more 
evenly  represented  in  consciousness  and  the  magi- 
cal, involuntary  nature  of  life  is  better  perceived. 
My  hand,  guided  by  I  know  not  what  machinery, 
is  at  this  moment  adding  syllable  to  syllable  upon 
this  paper,  to  the  general  fulfilment,  perhaps,  of 
my  felt  intent,  yet  giving  that  intent  an  articula- 
tion wholly  unforeseen,  and  often  disappointing. 
The  thoughts  to  be  expressed  simmer  half-con- 
sciously  in  my  brain.     I  feel  their  burden  and. 


HOW    THOUGHT    IS    PRACTICAL  217 

tendency  without  seeing  their  form,  until  the 
mechanical  train  of  impulsive  association,  started 
by  the  perusal  of  what  precedes  or  by  the  acciden- 
tal emergence  of  some  new  idea,  lights  the  fuse 
and  precipitates  the  phrases.  If  this  happens  in 
the  most  reflective  and  deliberate  of  activities,  like 
this  of  composition,  how  much  more  does  it  hap- 
^    ,      ,  .      pen  in  positive  action:    "The  die  is 

Contemplative    ^  ^ 

essence  of  cast,"  Said  Caesar,  feeling  a  decision 
action.  ^^  liimsclf  of  which  he  could  neither 

count  nor  weigh  the  multitudinous  causes;  and  so 
says  every  strong  and  clear  intellect,  every  well- 
formed  character,  seizing  at  the  same  moment 
with  comprehensive  instinct  both  its  purposes  and 
the  means  by  which  they  shall  be  attained.  Only 
the  fool,  whose  will  signifies  nothing,  boasts  to 
have  created  it  himself. 

We  must  not  seek  the  function  of  thought,  then, 
in  any  supposed  power  to  discover  either  ends  not 
suggested  by  natural  impulse  or  means  to  the  ac- 
complishment of  those  irrational  ends.  Atten- 
tion is  utterly  powerless  to  change  or  create  its 
objects  m  either  respect;  it  rather  registers  with- 
out surprise — for  it  expects  nothing  in  particular 
— and  watches  eagerly  the  images  bubbling  up  in 
the  living  mind  and  the  processes  evolving  there. 
These  processes  are  themselves  full  of  potency  and 
promise;  will  and  reflection  are  no  more  incon- 
sequential than  any  other  processes  bound  by 
natural  links  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  Even  if  an 
atomic  mechanism  suffices  to  mark  the  concatena- 


218  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

tion  of  everything  in  nature,  including  the  mind, 
it  cannot  rob  what  it  abstracts  from  of  its  natural 
weight  and  reality:  a  thread  that  may  suffice  to 
hold  the  pearls  together  is  not  the  whole  cause  of 
the  necklace.  But  this  pregnancy  and  implica- 
tion of  thought  in  relation  to  its  natural  environ- 
ment is  purely  empirical.  Since  natural  connec- 
tion is  merely  a  principle  of  arrangement  by  which 
the  contiguities  of  things  may  be  described  and 
inferred,  there  is  no  difficulty  in  admitting  con- 
sciousness and  all  its  works  into  the  web  and  woof 
of  nature.  Each  psychic  episode  would  be  her- 
alded by  its  material  antecedents;  its  transforma- 
tions would  be  subject  to  mechanical  laws,  which 
would  also  preside  over  the  further  transition  from 
thought  into  its  material  expression. 
Mechanical  This  iuclusiou  of  mind  in  nature, 

efficacy  alien    however,  is   as   far   as   possible   from 

to  thoxaght's  ^  •  <•  •  j 

essence.  Constituting  the  mind's  function  and 

value,  or  its  efficacy  in  a  moral  and  rational 
sense.  To  have  prepared  changes  in  matter 
would  give  no  rationality  to  mind  unless  those 
changes  in  turn  paved  the  way  to  some  better  men- 
tal existence.  The  worth  of  natural  efficacy  is 
therefore  always  derivative;  the  utility  of  mind 
would  be  no  more  precious  than  the  utility  of  mat- 
ter; both  borrow  all  their  worth  from  the  part 
they  may  play  empirically  in  introducing  those 
moral  values  which  are  intrinsic  and  self-sufficing. 
In  so  far  as  thought  is  instrumental  it  is  not  worth 
having,  any  more  than  matter,  except  for  its  prom- 


HOW   THOUGHT   IS   PRACTICAL         219 

ise;  it  must  terminate  in  something  truly  profit- 
able and  ultimate  which,  being  good  in  itself,  may 
lend  value  to  all  that  led  up  to  it.  But  this  ulti- 
mate good  is  itself  consciousness,  thought,  rational 
activity;  so  that  what  instrumental  mentality  may 
have  preceded  might  be  abolished  without  loss,  if 
matter  suffices  to  sustain  reason  in  being;  or  if 
that  instrumental  mentality  is  worth  retaining,  it 
is  so  only  because  it  already  contains  some  pre- 
monition and  image  of  its  own  fulfilment.  In 
a  word,  the  value  of  thought  is  ideal.  The  mate- 
rial efiBcacy  which  may  be  attributed  to  it  is  the 
proper  efficacy  of  matter — an  efficacy  which  mat- 
ter would  doubtless  claim  if  we  knew  enough  of 
its  secret  mechanism.  And  when  that  imputed 
and  incongruous  utility  was  subtracted  from  ideas 
they  would  appear  in  their  proper  form  of  expres- 
sions, realisations,  ultimate  fruits. 

The  incongruity  of  making  thought,  in  its 
moral  and  logical  essence,  an  instrument  in  the 
natural  world  will  appear  from  a  different  point 
of  view  if  we  shift  the  discussion  for  a  moment  to 
a  transcendental  level.  Since  the  material  world 
is  an  object  for  thought,  and  potential  in  relation 
Consciousness  to  immediate  experience,  it  can  hardly 
transcendental,  lie  in  the  samc  plane  of  reality  with 
the  thought  to  which  it  appears.  The  spectator  on 
this  side  of  the  foot-lights,  while  surely  regarded 
by  the  play  as  a  whole,  cannot  expect  to  figure  in 
its  mechanism  or  to  see  himself  strutting  among 
the  actors  on  the  boards.     He  listens  and  is  served. 


220  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

being  at  once  impotent  and  supreme.  It  has  been 
well  said  that 

Only  the  free  divine  the  laws, 
The  causeless  only  know  the  cause. 

Conversely,  what  in  such  a  transcendental  sense 
is  causeless  and  free  will  evidently  not  be  causal 
or  determinant,  being  something  altogether  uni- 
versal and  notional,  without  inherent  determina- 
tions or  specific  affinities.  The  objects  figuring  in 
consciousness  will  have  implications  and  will  re- 
quire causes ;  not  so  the  consciousness  itself.  The 
Ego  to  which  all  things  appear  equally,  whatever 
their  form  or  history,  is  the  ground  of  nothing 
incidental:  no  specific  characters  or  order  found 
in  the  world  can  be  attributed  to  its  efiicacy.  The 
march  of  experience  is  not  determined  by  the  mere 
fact  that  experience  exists.  Another  experience, 
differently  logical,  might  be  equally  real.  Con- 
sciousness is  not  itself  dynamic,  for  it  has  no  body, 
no  idiosyncrasy  or  particular  locus,  to  be  the  point 
of  origin  for  definite  relationships.  It  is  merely 
an  abstract  name  for  the  actuality  of  its  random 
objects.  All  force,  implication,  or  direction 
inhere  in  the  constitution  of  specific  objects  and 
live  in  their  interplay.  Logic  is  revealed  to 
thought  no  less  than  nature  is,  and  even  what  we 
call  invention  or  fancy  is  generated  not  by  thought 
itself  but  by  the  chance  fertility  of  nebulous 
objects,  floating  and  breeding  in  the  primeval 
chaos.     Where  the  natural  order  lapses,  if  it  ever 


HOW   THOUGHT   IS    PRACTICAL         221 

does,  not  mind  or  will  or  reason  can  possibly  inter- 
vene to  fill  the  chasm — for  these  are  parcels  and 
expressions  of  the  natural  order — but  only  noth- 
ingness and  pure  chance. 

Thought  is  thus  an  expression  of  natural  rela- 
tions, as  will  is  of  natural  affinities ;  yet  conscious- 
ness of  an  object's  value,  while  it  declares  the 
blind  disposition  to  pursue  that  object,  consti- 
tutes its  entire  worth.  Apart  from  the  pains  and 
satisfactions  involved,  an  impulse  and  its  execu- 
tion would  be  alike  destitute  of  importance.  It 
would  matter  nothing  how  chaotic  or  how  orderly 
the  world  became,  or  what  animal  bodies  arose  or 
perished  there;  any  tendencies  afoot  in  nature, 
whatever  they  might  construct  or  dissolve,  would 
involve  no  progress  or  disaster,  since  no  prefer- 
ences would  exist  to  pronounce  one  eventual  state 
of  things  better  than  another.  These  preferences 
and  are  in  themselves,  if  the  dynamic  order 

transcendent,  alone  be  considered,  works  of  superero- 
gation, expressing  force  but  not  producing  it,  like 
a  statue  of  Hercules;  but  the  principle  of  such 
preferences,  the  force  they  express  and  depend 
upon,  is  some  mechanical  impulse  itself  involved 
in  the  causal  process.  Expression  gives  value  to 
power,  and  the  strength  of  Hercules  would  have 
no  virtue  in  it  had  it  contributed  nothing  to  art 
and  civilisation.  That  conceived  basis  of  all  life 
which  we  call  matter  would  be  a  mere  potentiality, 
an  inferred  instrument  deprived  of  its  func- 
tion, if  it  did  not  actually  issue  in  life  and  con- 


222  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

sciousness.  What  gives  the  material  world  a  legit- 
imate status  and  perpetual  pertinence  in  human 
discourse  is  the  conscious  life  it  supports  and  car- 
ries in  its  own  direction,  as  a  ship  carries  its  pas- 
sengers or  rather  as  a  passion  carries  its  hopes. 
Conscious  interests  first  justify  and  moralise  the 
mechanisms  they  express.  Eventual  satisfac- 
tions, while  their  form  and  possibility  must  be  de- 
termined by  animal  tendencies,  alone  render  these 
tendencies  vehicles  of  the  good.  The  direction  in 
which  benefit  shall  lie  must  be  determined  by  irra- 
tional impulse^  Hut  the  attainment  of  benefit  con- 
sists in  crowning  that  impulse  with  its  ideal 
achievement.  Nature  dictates  what  men  shall 
seek  and  prompts  them  to  seek  it;  a  possibility  of 
happiness  is  thus  generated  and  only  its  fulfil- 
ment would  justify  nature  and  man  in  their  com- 
mon venture. 

It  is  the  seat  Satisfaction  is  the  touchstone  of 
of  value.  value;  without  reference  to  it  all  talk 
about  good  and  evil,  progress  or  decay,  is  mere- 
ly confused  verbiage,  pure  sophistry  in  which 
the  juggler  adroitly  withdraws  attention  from 
what  works  the  wonder — namely,  that  human 
and  moral  colouring  to  which  the  terms  he  plays 
with  owe  whatever  efficacy  they  have.  Metaphy- 
sicians sometimes  so  define  the  good  as  to  make 
it  a  matter  of  no  importance ;  not  seldom  they  give 
that  name  to  the  sum  of  all  evils.  A  good, 
absolute  in  the  sense  of  being  divorced  from  all 
natural  demand  and  all  possible  satisfaction,  would 


HOW    THOUGHT   IS    PRACTICAL         223 

be  as  remote  as  possible  from  goodness:  to  call  it 
good  is  mere  disloyalty  to  morals,  brought  about 
by  some  fantastic  or  dialectical  passion.  In  ex- 
cellence there  is  an  essential  bias,  an  opposition 
to  the  possible  opposite;  this  bias  expresses  a 
mechanical  impulse,  a  situation  that  has  stirred 
the  senses  and  the  will.  Impulse  makes  value  pos- 
sible; and  the  value  becomes  actual  when  the  im- 
pulse issues  in  processes  that  give  it  satisfaction 
and  have  a  conscious  worth.  Character  is  the 
basis  of  happiness  and  happiness  the  sanction  of 
character.* 

That  thought  is  nature's  concomitant  expres- 
sion  or  entelechy,  never  one  of  her  instruments, 
is  a  truth  long  ago  divined  by  the  more  judicious 
thinkers,  like  Aristotle  and  Spinoza ;  but  it  has  not 
met  with  general  acceptance  or  even  consideration. 
It  is  obstructed  by  superficial  empiricism,  which 
associates  the  better-known  aspects  of  events  di- 
rectly together,  without  considering  what  mechani- 

*  Aristippus  asked  Socrates  "  whether  he  knew  any- 
thing  good,  so  that  if  he  answered  by  naming  food  or  drink 
or  money  or  health  or  strength  or  valour  or  anything  of  that 
sort,  he  might  at  once  show  that  it  was  sometimes  an  evil. 
Socrates,  however,  knew  very  well  that  if  anything  troubles 
us  what  we  demand  is  its  cure,  and  he  replied  in  the  most 
pertinent  fashion.  '  Are  you  asking  me,'  he  said,  '  if  I  know 
anything  good  for  a  fever  ?  '  '  Oh,  no,'  said  the  other.  '  Or 
for  sore  eyes  ?  '  '  Not  that,  either.'  '  Or  for  hunger  ?  '  '  No, 
not  for  hunger.'  '  Well,  then,'  said  he,  'if  you  ask  me 
whether  I  know  a  good  that  is  good  for  nothing,  I  neither 
know  it  nor  want  to  know  it.'" — Xenophon,  Memorabilia, 
iii.,  8. 


224  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

cal  bonds  may  secretly  unite  them ;  it  is  obstruct- 
ed also  by  the  traditional  mythical  idealism,  in- 
tent as  this  philosophy  is  on  proving  nature  to 
be  the  expression  of  something  ulterior  and  non- 
natural  and  on  hugging  the  fatal  misconception 
that  ideals  and  eventual  goods  are  creative  and 
miraculous  forces,  without  perceiving  that  it 
thereby  renders  goods  and  ideals  perfectly  sense- 
less; for  how  can  anything  be  a  good  at  all  to 
which  some  existing  nature  is  not  already  directed  ? 
It  may  therefore  be  worth  while,  before  leaving 
this  phase  of  the  subject,  to  consider  one  or  two 
prejudices  which  might  make  it  sound  paradoxi- 
cal to  say,  as  we  propose,  that  ideals  are  ideal  and 
nature  natural. 

Apparent  0^  ^^l  forms  of  cousciousuess  the 

utiuty  of  pain,  one  apparently  most  useful  is  pain, 
which  is  also  the  one  most  immersed  in  matter 
and  most  opposite  to  ideality  and  excellence.  Its 
utility  lies  in  the  warning  it  gives:  in  trying  to 
escape  pain  we  escape  destruction.  That  we  de- 
sire to  escape  pain  is  certain;  its  very  definition 
can  hardly  go  beyond  the  statement  that  pain  is 
that  element  of  feeling  which  we  seek  to  abolish  on 
account  of  its  intrinsic  quality.  That  this  desire, 
however,  should  know  how  to  initiate  remedial 
action  is  a  notion  contrary  to  experience  and  in 
itself  unthinkable.  If  pain  could  have  cured  us  we 
should  long  ago  have  been  saved.  The  bitterest 
quintessence  of  pain  is  its  helplessness,  and  our 
incapacity  to  abolish  it.     The  most  intolerable 


HOW    THOUGHT   IS    PRACTICAL  225 

torments  are  those  we  feel  gaining  upon  us,  in- 
tensifying and  prolonging  themselves  indefinitely. 
Its  real  This  baffling  quality,  so  conspicuous  in 

impotence.  extreme  agony,  is  present  in  all  pain 
and  is  perhaps  its  essence.  If  we  sought  to  de- 
scribe by  a  circumlocution  what  is  of  course  a 
primary  sensation,  we  might  scarcely  do  better 
than  to  say  that  pain  is  consciousness  at  once  in- 
tense and  empty,  fixing  attention  on  what  con- 
tains no  character,  and  arrests  all  satisfactions 
without  offering  anything  in  exchange.  The  hor- 
ror of  pain  lies  in  its  intolerable  intensity  and  its 
intolerable  tedium.  It  can  accordingly  be  cured 
either  by  sleep  or  by  entertainment.  In  itself  it 
has  no  resource;  its  violence  is  quite  helpless  and 
its  vacancy  offers  no  expedients  by  which  it  might 
be  unknotted  and  relieved. 

Pain  is  not  only  impotent  in  itself  but  is  a  sign 
of  impotence  in  the  sufferer.  Its  appearance,  far 
from  constituting  its  own  remedy,  is  like  all  other 
organic  phenomena  subject  to  the  law  of  inertia 
and  tends  only  to  its  own  continuance.  A  man's 
hatred  of  his  own  condition  no  more  helps  to  im- 
prove it  than  hatred  of  other  people  tends  to  im- 
prove them.  If  we  allowed  ourselves  to  speak  in 
such  a  case  of  efficacy  at  all,  we  should  say  that 
pain  perpetuates  and  propagates  itself  in  various 
ways,  now  by  weakening  the  system,  now  by 
prompting  convulsive  efforts,  now  by  spreading  to 
other  beings  through  the  contagion  of  sympathy 
or  vengeance.  In  fact,  however,  it  merely  betrays 
Vol.  L— 15 


226  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

a  maladjustment  which  has  more  or  less  natural 
stability.  It  may  be  instantaneous  only;  by  its 
lack  of  equilibrium  it  may  involve  the  immediate 
destruction  of  one  of  its  factors.  In  that  case  we 
fabulously  say  that  the  pain  has  instinctively  re- 
moved its  own  cause.  Pain  is  here  apparently 
useful  because  it  expresses  an  incipient  tension 
which  the  self-preserving  forces  in  the  organism 
are  sufficient  to  remove.  Pain's  appearance  is  then 
the  sign  for  its  instant  disappearance;  not  indeed 
by  virtue  of  its  inner  nature  or  of  any  art  it  can 
initiate,  but  merely  by  virtue  of  mechanical  asso- 
ciations between  its  cause  and  its  remedy.  The 
burned  child  dreads  the  fire  and,  reading  only  the 
surface  of  his  life,  fancies  that  the  pain  once  felt 
and  still  remembered  is  the  ground  of  his  new 
prudence.  Punishments,  however,  are  not  always 
efficacious,  as  everyone  knows  who  has  tried  to 
govern  children  or  cities  by  the  rod ;  suffering  does 
not  bring  wisdom  nor  even  memory,  unless  intelli- 
gence and  docility  are  already  there ;  that  is,  unless 
the  friction  which  the  pain  betrayed  sufficed  to 
obliterate  permanently  one  of  the  impulses  in  con- 
flict. This  readjustment,  on  which  real  improve- 
ment hangs  and  which  alone  makes  "  experience  " 
useful,  does  not  correspond  to  the  intensity  or  repe- 
tition of  the  pains  endured;  it  corresponds  rather 
to  such  a  plasticity  in  the  organism  that  the  pain- 
ful conflict  is  no  longer  produced. 
Preformations  Threatened  destruction  would  not 
involved.        involve  pain  unless  that  threatened  de- 


HOW    THOUGHT    IS    PRACTICAL  227 

struction  were  being  resisted;  so  that  the  reaction 
which  pain  is  supposed  to  cause  must  already  be 
taking  place  before  pain  can  be  felt.  A  will  with- 
out direction  cannot  be  thwarted;  so  that  inhibi- 
tion cannot  be  the  primary  source  of  any  effort  or 
of  any  ideal.  Determinate  impulses  must  exist 
already  for  their  inhibition  to  have  taken  place  or 
for  the  pain  to  arise  which  is  the  sign  of  that 
inhibition.  The  child's  dread  of  the  fire  marks 
the  acceleration  of  that  impulse  which,  when  he 
was  burned,  originally  enabled  him  to  withdraw 
his  hand;  and  if  he  did  not  now  shrink  in  antici- 
pation he  would  not  remember  the  pain  nor  know 
to  what  to  attach  his  terror.  Sight  now  suffices  to 
awaken  the  reaction  which  touch  at  first  was 
needed  to  produce;  the  will  has  extended  its  line 
of  battle  and  thrown  out  its  scouts  farther  afield ; 
and  pain  has  been  driven  back  to  the  frontiers  of 
the  spirit.  The  conflicting  reactions  are  now 
peripheral  and  feeble;  the  pain  involved  in  aver- 
sion is  nothing  to  that  once  involved  in  the  burn. 
Had  this  aversion  to  fire  been  innate,  as  many 
aversions  are,  no  pain  would  have  been  caused, 
because  no  profound  maladjustment  would  have 
occurred.  The  surviving  attraction,  checked  by 
fear,  is  a  remnant  of  the  old  disorganisation  in 
the  brain  which  was  the  seat  of  conflicting  re- 
actions. 

To  say  that  this  conflict  is  the  guide  to  its 
own  issue  is  to  talk  without  thinking.  The  con- 
flict is  the  sign  of  inadequate  organisation,  or  of 


228  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

non-adaptation  in  the  given  organism  to  the  vari- 
ous stimuli  which  irritate  it.    The  reconstruction 

Its  untoward  which  folloWS  this  Conflict,  when  it  in- 
significance, deed  follows,  is  of  course  a  new  and 
better  adaptation;  so  that  what  involves  the 
pain  may  often  be  a  process  of  training  which 
directs  reaction  into  new  and  smoother  channels. 
But  the  pain  is  present  whether  a  permanent  ad- 
aptation is  being  attained  or  not.  It  is  present 
in  progressive  dissolution  and  in  hopeless  and  ex- 
hausting struggles  far  more  than  in  education  or 
in  profitable  correction.  Toothache  and  sea-sick- 
ness, birth-pangs  and  melancholia  are  not  useful 
ills.  The  intenser  the  pain  the  more  probable  its 
uselessness.  Only  in  vanishing  is  it  a  sign  of 
progress;  in  occurring  it  is  an  omen  of  defeat, 
just  as  disease  is  an  omen  of  death,  although,  for 
those  diseased  already,  medicine  and  convalescence 
may  be  approaches  to  health  again.  Where  a 
man's  nature  is  out  of  gear  and  his  instincts  are 
inordinate,  suffering  may  be  a  sign  that  a  danger- 
ous peace,  in  which  impulse  was  carrying  him 
ignorantly  into  paths  without  issue,  is  giving  place 
to  a  peace  with  security  in  which  his  reconstructed 
character  may  respond  without  friction  to  the 
world,  and  enable  him  to  gather  a  clearer  experi- 
ence and  enjoy  a  purer  vitality.  The  utility  of 
pain  is  thus  apparent  onl}^  and  due  to  empirical 
haste  in  collating  events  that  have  no  regular  nor 
inward  relation;  and  even  this  imputed  utility 
pain  has  only  in  proportion  to  the  worthlessness  of 
those  who  need  it. 


HOW   THOUGHT   IS    PEACTICAL  229 

_  ^   ,  ^  A   second   current   preiudice   which 

Perfect  func-  ^      •> 

tion  not  un-  may  descrvc  notice  suggests  that  an 
conscious.  organ,  when  its  function  is  perfect, 
becomes  unconscious,  so  that  if  adaptation  were: 
complete  life  would  disappear.  The  well-learned 
routine  of  any  mechanical  art  passes  into  habit, 
and  habit  into  unconscious  operation.  The  vir- 
tuoso is  not  aware  how  he  manipulates  his  instru- 
ment ;  what  was  conscious  labour  in  the  beginning 
has  become  instinct  and  miracle  in  the  end.  Thus 
it  might  appear  that  to  eliminate  friction  and  diffi- 
culty would  be  to  eliminate  consciousness,  and 
therefore  value,  from  the  world.  Life  would  thus 
be  involved  in  a  contradiction  and  moral  effort  in 
an  absurdity ;  for  while  the  constant  aim  of  prac- 
tice is  perfection  and  that  of  labour  ease,  and  both 
are  without  meaning  or  standard  unless  directed 
to  the  attainment  of  these  ends,  yet  such  attain- 
ment, if  it  were  actual,  would  be  worthless,  so 
that  what  alone  justifies  effort  would  lack  justifi- 
cation and  would  in  fact  be  incapable  of  exist- 
ence. The  good  musician  must  strive  to  play  per- 
fectly, but,  alas,  we  are  told,  if  he  succeeded  he 
would  have  become  an  automaton.  The  good  man 
must  aspire  to  holiness,  but,  alas,  if  he  reached 
holiness  his  moral  life  would  have  evaporated. 

These  melodramatic  prophecies,  however,  need 
not  alarm  us.  They  arc  founded  on  nothing  but 
rhetoric  and  small  allegiance  to  any  genuine  good. 
When  we  attain  perfection  of  function  we  lose 
consciousness   of  the   medium,   to   become   more 


230  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

clearly  conscious  of  the  result.  The  eye  that  does 
its  duty  gives  no  report  of  itself  and  has  no  sense 
of  muscular  tension  or  weariness;  but  it  gives  all 
the  brighter  and  steadier  image  of  the  object  seen. 
Consciousness  is  not  lost  when  focussed,  and  the 
labour  of  vision  is  abolished  in  its  fruition.  So  the 
musician,  could  he  play  so  divinely  as  to  be  un- 
conscious of  his  body,  his  instrument,  and  the  very 
lapse  of  time,  would  be  only  the  more  absorbed  in 
the  harmony,  more  completely  master  of  its  uni- 
ties and  beauty.  At  such  moments  the  body's 
long  labour  at  last  brings  forth  the  soul.  Life 
from  its  inception  is  simply  some  partial  natural 
harmony  raising  its  voice  and  bearing  witness  to 
its  own  existence;  to  perfect  that  harmony  is  to 
round  out  and  intensify  that  life.  This  is  the 
very  secret  of  power,  of  joy,  of  intelligence.  Not 
to  have  understood  it  is  to  have  passed  through 
life  without  understanding  anything. 

The  analogy  extends  to  morals,  where  also  the 
means  may  be  advantageously  forgotten  when  the 
end  has  been  secured.  That  leisure  to  which  work 
is  directed  and  that  perfection  in  which  virtue 
would  be  fulfilled  are  so  far  from  being  apathetic 
that  they  are  states  of  pure  activity,  by  containing 
which  other  acts  are  rescued  from  utter  passivity 
and  unconsciousness.  Impure  feeling  ranges 
between  two  extremes:  absolute  want  and  com- 
plete satisfaction.  The  former  limit  is  reached 
in  anguish,  madness,  or  the  agony  of  death,  when 
the  accidental  flux  of  things  in  contradiction  has 


HOW   THOUGHT   IS   PRACTICAL  231 

reached  its  maximum  or  vanishing  point,  so  that 
the  contradiction  and  the  flux  themselves  disappear 
by  direraption.  Such  feeling  denotes  inward  dis- 
organisation and  a  hopeless  conflict  of  reflex 
actions  tending  toward  dissolution.  The  second 
limit  is  reached  in  contemplation,  when  anything 
is  loved,  understood,  or  enjoyed.  Synthetic  power 
is  then  at  its  height;  the  mind  can  survey  its  ex- 
perience and  correlate  all  the  motions  it  suggests. 
Power  in  the  mind  is  exactly  proportionate  to 
representative  scope,  and  representative  scope  to 
rational  activity.  A  steady  vision  of  all  things 
in  their  true  order  and  worth  results  from  per- 
fection of  function  and  is  its  index ;  it  secures  the 
greatest  distinctness  in  thought  together  with  the 
greatest  decision,  wisdom,  and  ease  in  action,  as 
the  lightning  is  brilliant  and  quick.  It  also 
secures,  so  far  as  human  energies  avail,  its  own 
perpetuity,  since  what  is  perfectly  adjusted  within 
and  without  lasts  long  and  goes  far. 
Inchoate  ethics.  To  confuse  mcaus  with  ends  and 
mistake  disorder  for  vitality  is  not  unnatural  to 
minds  that  hear  the  hum  of  mighty  workings  but 
can  imagine  neither  the  cause  nor  the  fruits  of 
that  portentous  commotion.  All  functions,  in 
such  chaotic  lives,  seem  instrumental  functions. 
It  is  then  supposed  that  what  serves  no  further 
purpose  can  have  no  value,  and  that  ho  who 
suffers  no  offuscation  can  have  no  feeling  and 
no  life.  To  attain  an  ideal  seems  to  destroy 
its  worth.     Moral  life,  at  that  low  level,  is  a 


232  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

fantastic  game  only,  not  having  come  in  sight 
of  humane  and  liberal  interests.  The  barba- 
rian's intensity  is  without  seriousness  and  his 
passion  without  joy.  His  philosophy,  which 
means  to  glorify  all  experience  and  to  digest 
all  vice,  is  in  truth  an  expression  of  pathetic  in- 
nocence. It  betrays  a  rudimentary  impulse  to  fol- 
low every  beckoning  hand,  to  assume  that  no  ad- 
venture and  no  bewitchment  can  be  anything  but 
glorious.  Such  an  attitude  is  intelligible  in  one 
who  has  never  seen  anything  worth  seeing  nor 
loved  anything  worth  loving.  Immaturity  could 
go  no  farther  than  to  acknowledge  no  limits  de- 
fining will  and  happiness.  When  such  limits, 
however,  are  gradually  discovered  and  an  authori- 
tative ideal  is  born  of  the  marriage  of  human 
nature  with  experience,  happiness  becomes  at  once 
definite  and  attainable;  for  adjustment  is  pos- 
sible to  a  world  that  has  a  fruitful  and  intelligible 
structure. 

Such  incoherences,  which  might  well  arise  in 
ages  without  traditions,  may  be  preserved  and  fos- 
tered by  superstition.  Perpetual  servile  employ- 
ments and  subjection  to  an  irrational  society  may 
render  people  incapable  even  of  conceiving  a  lib- 
eral life.  They  may  come  to  think  their  happi- 
ness no  longer  separable  from  their  misery  and 
to  fear  the  large  emptiness,  as  they  deem  it,  of  a 
happy  world.  Like  the  prisoner  of  Chillon,  after 
60  long  a  captivity,  they  would  regain  their  free- 
dom with  a  sigh.     The  wholesome  influences  of 


HOW    THOUGHT    IS    PRACTICAL  233 

nature,  however,  would  soon  revive  their  wills, 
contorted  by  unnatural  oppression,  and  a  vision 
of  perfection  would  arise  within  them  upon  breath- 
ing a  purer  air.  Freedom  and  perfection  are 
synonymous  with  life.     The  peace  they  bring  is  one 

whose  names  are  also  rapture,  power, 
Clear  sight,  and  love;  for  these  are  parts  of  peace. 

Thou  ht  the  Thought  belongs  to  the  sphere  of 
enteiechy  ultimate  lesults.  What,  indeed,  could 
of  being.  jjg  more  fitting  than  that  conscious- 
ness, which  is  self-revealing  and  transcendentally 
primary,  should  be  its  own  excuse  for  being  and 
should  contain  its  own  total  value,  together  with 
the  total  value  of  everything  else?  What  could 
be  more  proper  than  that  the  whole  worth  of  ideas 
should  be  ideal?  To  make  an  idea  instrumental 
would  be  to  prostitute  what,  being  self -existent, 
should  be  self-justifying.  That  continual  abso- 
luteness which  consciousness  possesses,  since  in  it 
alone  all  heaven  and  earth  are  at  any  moment  re- 
vealed, ought  to  convince  any  radical  and  heart- 
searching  philosopher  that  all  values  should  be 
continually  integrated  and  realised  there,  where 
all  energies  are  being  momently  focussed. 
Thought  is  a  fulfilment;  its  function  is  to  lend 
utility  to  its  causes  and  to  make  actual  those  con- 
ceived and  subterranean  processes  which  find  in 
it  their  ultimate  expression.  Thought  is  nature 
represented;  it  is  potential  energy  producing  life 
and  becoming  an  actual  appearance. 


234  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

The  conditions  of  consciousness,  however,  are 
far  from  being  its  only  theme.  As  consciousness 
Its  exuberance,  bears  a  transcendent  relation  to  the 
dynamic  world  (for  it  is  actual  and  spiritual, 
while  the  dynamic  is  potential  and  material)  so 
it  may  be  exuberant  and  irresponsibly  rich. 
Although  its  elements,  in  point  of  distribution  and 
derivation,  are  grounded  in  matter,  as  music  is 
in  vibrations,  yet  in  point  of  character  the  result 
may  be  infinitely  redundant.  The  complete  musi- 
cian would  devote  but  a  small  part  of  his  attention 
to  the  basis  of  music,  its  mechanism,  ps3^chology, 
or  history.  Long  before  he  had  represented  to  his 
mind  the  causes  of  his  art,  he  would  have  pro- 
ceeded to  practise  and  enjoy  it.  So  sense  and  im- 
agination, passion  and  reason,  may  enrich  the  soil 
that  breeds  them  and  cover  it  with  a  maze  of 
flowers. 

The  theme  of  consciousness  is  accordingly  far 
more  than  the  material  world  which  constitutes 
its  basis,  though  this  also  is  one  of  its  themes; 
thought  is  no  less  at  home  in  various  expres- 
sions and  embroideries  with  which  the  material 
world  can  be  overlaid  in  imagination.  The  mate- 
rial world  is  conceived  by  digging  beneath  experi- 
ence to  find  its  cause ;  it  is  the  ejfficacious  structure 
and  skeleton  of  things.  This  is  the  subject  of 
scientific  retrospect  and  calculation.  The  forces 
disclosed  by  physical  studies  are  of  course  not 
directed  to  producing  a  mind  that  might  merely 
describe  them.     A  force  is  expressed  in  many  other 


HOW   THOUGHT   IS    PRACTICAL         235 

ways  than  by  being  defined;  it  may  be  felt,  re- 
sisted, embodied,  transformed,  or  symbolised. 
Forces  work ;  they  are  not,  like  mathematical  con- 
cepts, exhausted  in  description.  From  that  mat- 
ter which  might  be  describable  in  mechanical 
formula  there  issue  notwithstanding  all  manner 
of  forms  and  harmonies,  visible,  audible,  imagin- 
able, and  passionately  prized.  Every  phase  of  the 
ideal  world  emanates  from  the  natural  and  loudly 
proclaims  its  origin  by  the  interest  it  takes  in 
natural  existences,  of  which  it  gives  a  rational  in- 
terpretation. Sense,  art,  religion,  society,  express 
nature  exuberantly  and  in  symbols  long  before 
science  is  added  to  represent,  by  a  different  ab- 
straction, the  mechanism  which  nature  contains. 


CHAPTER   X 

THE   MEASURE    OF   VALUES    IN   REFLECTION 

Honesty  in  To  put  value  in  pleasure  and  pain, 

hedonism.  regarding  a  given  quantity  of  pain 
as  balancing  a  given  quantity  of  pleasure,  is  to 
bring  to  practical  ethics  a  worthy  intention  to  be 
clear  and,  what  is  more  precious,  an  undoubted 
honesty  not  always  found  in  those  moralists  who 
maintain  the  opposite  opinion  and  care  more  for 
edification  than  for  truth.  For  in  spite  of  all 
logical  and  psychological  scruples,  conduct  that 
should  not  justify  itself  somehow  by  the  satisfac- 
tions secured  and  the  pains  avoided  would  not 
justify  itself  at  all.  The  most  instinctive  and 
unavoidable  desire  is  forthwith  chilled  if  you  dis- 
cover that  its  ultimate  end  is  to  be  a  preponder- 
ance of  suffering;  and  what  arrests  this  desire  is 
not  fear  or  weakness  but  conscience  in  its  most 
categorical  and  sacred  guise.  Who  would  not  be 
ashamed  to  acknowledge  or  to  propose  so  inhuman 
an  action? 

By  sad  experience  rooted  impulses  may  be 
transformed  or  even  obliterated.  And  quite  intel- 
ligibly: for  the  idea  of  pain  is  already  the  sign 
and   the  beginning   of  a   certain   stoppage.     To 

236 


MEASURE   OF   VALUES  237 

imagine  failure  is  to  interpret  ideally  a  felt  in- 
hibition. To  prophesy  a  check  would  be  impos- 
sible but  for  an  incipient  movement  already  meet- 
ing an  incipient  arrest.  Intensified,  this  prophecy 
becomes  its  own  fulfilment  and  totally  inhibits 
the  opposed  tendency.  Therefore  a  mind  that 
foresees  pain  to  be  the  ultimate  result  of  action 
cannot  continue  unreservedly  to  act,  seeing  that 
its  foresight  is  the  conscious  transcript  of  a  recoil 
already  occurring.  Conversely,  the  mind  that 
surrenders  itself  wholly  to  any  impulse  must  think 
that  its  execution  would  be  delightful.  A  per- 
fectly wise  and  representative  will,  therefore, 
would  aim  only  at  what,  in  its  attainment,  could 
continue  to  be  aimed  at  and  approved;  and  this 
is  another  way  of  saying  that  its  aim  would  secure 
the  maximum  of  satisfaction  eventually  possible. 
Necessary  '  I^  spite,  howevcr,  of  this  involution 
qualifications,  of  pain  and  pleasure  in  all  deliberate 
forecast  and  volition,  pain  and  pleasure  are  not 
the  ultimate  sources  of  value.  A  correct  psychol- 
ogy and  logic  cannot  allow  that  an  eventual  and, 
in  strictness,  unpresentable  feeling,  can  determine 
any  act  or  volition,  but  must  insist  that,  on  the 
contrary,  all  beliefs  about  future  experience,  with 
all  premonition  of  its  emotional  quality,  is  based 
on  actual  impulse  and  feeling;  so  that  the  source 
of  value  is  nothing  but  the  inner  fountain  of  life 
and  imagination,  and  the  object  of  pursuit  noth- 
ing but  the  ideal  object,  counterpart  of  the  pres- 
ent demand.     Abstract  satisfaction  is  not  pursued. 


238  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

but,  if  the  will  and  the  environment  are  constant, 
satisfaction  will  necessarily  be  felt  in  achieving 
the  object  desired.  A  rejection  of  hedonistic 
psychology,  therefore,  by  no  means  involves  any 
opposition  to  eudsemonism  in  ethics.  Eudaemon- 
ism  is  another  name  for  wisdom :  there  is  no  other 
moral  morality.  Any  system  that,  for  some  sinis- 
ter reason,  should  absolve  itself  from  good-will 
toward  all  creatures,  and  make  it  somehow  a  duty 
to  secure  their  misery,  would  be  clearly  disloyal 
to  reason,  humanity,  and  justice.  Nor  would  it 
be  hard,  in  that  case,  to  point  out  what  supersti- 
tion, what  fantastic  obsession,  or  what  private  fury, 
had  made  those  persons  blind  to  prudence  and 
kindness  in  so  plain  a  matter.  Happiness  is  the 
only  sanction  of  life;  where  happiness  fails,  ex- 
istence remains  a  mad  and  lamentable  experiment. 
The  question,  however,  what  happiness  shall  con- 
sist in,  its  complexion  if  it  should  once  arise,  can 
only  be  determined  by  reference  to  natural  de- 
mands and  capacities;  so  that  while  satisfaction 
by  the  attainment  of  ends  can  alone  justify  their 
pursuit,  this  pursuit  itself  must  exist  first  and  be 
spontaneous,  thereby  fixing  the  goals  of  endeavour 
and  distinguishing  the  states  in  which  satisfaction 
might  be  found.  Natural  disposition,  therefore, 
is  the  principle  of  preference  and  makes  morality 
and  happiness  possible. 

The  wiu  must  The  standard  of  value,  like  every 
judge.  standard,  must  be  one.     Pleasures  and 

pains  are  not  only  infinitely  diverse  but,  even  if 


MEASURE    OF    VALUES  239 

reduced  to  their  total  bulk  and  abstract  opposi- 
tion, they  remain  two.  Their  values  must  be 
compared,  and  obviously  neither  one  can  be  the 
standard  by  which  to  judge  the  other.  This 
standard  is  an  ideal  involved  in  the  judgment 
passed,  whatever  that  judgment  may  be.  Thus 
when  Petrarch  says  that  a  thousand  pleasures 
are  not  worth  one  pain,  he  establishes  an  ideal 
of  value  deeper  than  either  pleasure  or  pain,  an 
ideal  which  makes  a  life  of  satisfaction  marred  by 
a  single  pang  an  offence  and  a  horror  to  his  soul. 
If  our  demand  for  rationality  is  less  acute  and 
the  miscellaneous  affirmations  of  the  will  carry  us 
along  with  a  well-fed  indifference  to  some  single 
tragedy  within  us,  we  may  aver  that  a  single  pang 
is  only  the  thousandth  part  of  a  thousand  pleas- 
ures and  that  a  life  so  balanced  is  nine  hundred 
and  ninety-nine  times  better  than  nothing.  This 
judgment,  for  all  its  air  of  mathematical  calcu- 
lation, in  truth  expresses  a  choice  as  irrational  as 
Petrarch's.  It  merely  means  that,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  mixed  prospect  presented  to  us  attracts 
our  wills  and  attracts  them  vehemently.  So  that 
the  only  possible  criterion  for  the  relative  values 
of  pains  and  pleasures  is  the  will  that  chooses 
among  them  or  among  combinations  of  them ;  nor 
can  the  intensity  of  pleasures  and  pains,  apart 
from  the  physical  violence  of  their  expression,  be 
judged  by  any  other  standard  than  by  the  power 
they  have,  when  represented,  to  control  the  will's 
movement. 


240  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

,  .   ,.  Here  we  come  upon   one  of  those 

Injustice  .... 

inherent  in  initial  irrationalities  in  the  world 
representation,  ^^^^^^i  theories  of  all  sorts,  since  they 
are  attempts  to  find  rationality  in  things,  are  in 
serious  danger  of  overlooking.  In  estimating  the 
value  of  any  experience,  our  endeavour,  our  pre- 
tension, is  to  weigh  the  value  which  that  experi- 
ence possesses  when  it  is  actual.  But  to  weigh 
is  to  compare,  and  to  compare  is  to  represent,  since 
the  transcendental  isolation  and  self-sufficiency  of 
actual  experience  precludes  its  lying  side  by  side 
with  another  datum,  like  two  objects  given  in 
a  single  consciousness.  Successive  values,  to  be 
compared,  must  be  represented ;  but  the  conditions 
of  representation  are  such  that  they  rob  objects 
of  the  values  they  had  at  their  first  appearance 
to  substitute  the  values  they  possess  at  their  re- 
currence. For  representation  mirrors  conscious- 
ness only  by  mirroring  its  objects,  and  the  emo- 
tional reaction  upon  those  objects  cannot  be 
represented  directly,  but  is  approached  by  indirect 
methods,  through  an  imitation  or  assimilation  of 
will  to  will  and  emotion  to  emotion.  Only  by  the 
instrumentality  of  signs,  like  gesture  or  language, 
can  we  bring  ourselves  to  reproduce  in  some  meas- 
ure an  absent  experience  and  to  feel  some  premoni- 
tion of  its  absolute  value.  Apart  from  very  elab- 
orate and  cumulative  suggestions  to  the  contrary, 
we  should  always  attribute  to  an  event  in  every 
other  experience  the  value  which  its  image  now 
had  in  our  own.     But  in  that  case  the  pathetic 


MEASUEE    OF    VALUES  241 

fallacy  would  be  present;  for  a  volitional  reaction 
upon  an  idea  in  one  vital  context  is  no  index  to 
what  the  volitional  reaction  would  be  in  another 
vital  context  upon  the  situation  which  that  idea 
represents. 

.Esthetic  and  ^^^^  divergence  falsifies  all  repre- 
specuiative  sentation  of  life  and  renders  it  initially 
cruelty.  crucl,  sentimental,  and  mythical.     We 

dislike  to  trample  on  a  flower,  because  its  form 
makes  a  kind  of  blossoming  in  our  own  fancy 
which  we  call  beauty;  but  we  laugh  at  pangs  we 
endured  in  childhood  and  feel  no  tremor  at  the 
incalculable  sufferings  of  all  mankind  beyond  our 
horizon,  because  no  imitable  image  is  involved  to 
start  a  contrite  thrill  in  our  own  bosom.  The 
same  cruelty  appears  in  assthetic  pleasures,  in 
lust,  war,  and  ambition;  in  the  illusions  of  desire 
and  memory;  in  the  unsympathetic  quality  of 
theory  everywhere,  which  regards  the  uniformi- 
ties of  cause  and  effect  and  the  -beauties  of  law 
as  a  justification  for  the  inherent  evils  in  the  ex- 
perience described;  in  the  unjust  judgments, 
finally,  of  mystical  optimism,  that  sinks  so  com- 
pletely into  its  subjective  commotion  as  to  mistake 
the  suspension  of  all  discriminating  and  represen- 
tative faculties  for  a  true  union  in  things,  and 
the  blur  of  its  own  ecstasy  for  a  universal  glory. 
These  pleasures  are  all  on  the  sensuous  plane,  the 
plane  of  levity  and  unintentional  wickedness;  but 
in  their  own  sphere  they  have  their  own  value. 
.Esthetic  and  speculative  emotions  make  an  im- 
VoL.  L— 16 


242  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

portant  contribution  to  the  total  worth  of  exist, 
ence,  but  they  do  not  abolish  the  evils  of  that  ex- 
perience  on  which  they  reflect  with  such  ruthless 
satisfaction.  The  satisfaction  is  due  to  a  private 
flood  of  emotion  submerging  the  images  present  in 
fancy,  or  to  the  exercise  of  a  new  intellectual  func- 
tion, like  that  of  abstraction,  synthesis,  or  com- 
parison. Such  a  faculty,  when  fully  developed, 
is  capable  of  yielding  pleasures  as  intense  and 
voluminous  as  those  proper  to  rudimentary  ani- 
mal functions,,  wrongly  supposed  to  be  more  vital. 
The  acme  of  vitality  lies  in  truth  in  the  most 
comprehensive  and  penetrating  thought.  The 
rhythms,  the  sweep,  the  impetuosity  of  impassioned 
contemplation  not  only  contain  in  themselves  a 
great  vitality  and  potency,  but  they  often  succeed 
in  engaging  the  lower  functions  in  a  sympathetic 
vibration,  and  we  see  the  whole  body  and  soul  rapt, 
as  we  say,  and  borne  along  by  the  harmonies  of 
imagination  and  thought.  In  these  fugitive 
moments  of  intoxication  the  detail  of  truth  is  sub- 
merged and  forgotten.  The  emotions  which 
would  be  suggested  by  the  parts  are  replaced  by 
the  rapid  emotion  of  transition  between  them ;  and 
this  exhilaration  in  survey,  this  mountain-top  ex- 
perience, is  supposed  to  be  also  the  truest  vision 
of  reality.  Absorption  in  a  supervening  function 
is  mistaken  for  comprehension  of  all  fact,  and  this 
inevitably,  since  all  consciousness  of  particular 
facts  and  of  their  values  is  then  submerged  in  the 
torrent  of  cerebral  excitement. 


MEASURE    OF    VALUES  243 

-      .  .  That  luminous  blindness  which  in 

Imputed 

values:  their  these  casGs  takes  an  extreme  form  is 
inconstancy,  present  in  principle  throughout  all  re- 
flection. We  tend  to  regard  our  own  past  as  good 
only  when  we  still  find  some  value  in  the  memory 
of  it.  Last  year,  last  week,  even  the  feelings  of 
the  last  five  minutes,  are  not  otherwise  prized  than 
by  the  pleasure  we  may  still  have  in  recalling 
them;  the  pulsations  of  pleasure  or  pain  which 
they  contained  we  do  not  even  seek  to  remember 
or  to  discriminate.  The  period  is  called  happy  or 
unhappy  merely  as  its  ideal  representation  exer- 
cises fascination  or  repulsion  over  the  present  will. 
Hence  the  revulsion  after  physical  indulgence, 
often  most  violent  when  the  pleasure — judged  by 
its  concomitant  expression  and  by  the  desire  that 
heralded  it — was  most  intense.  For  the  strongest 
passions  are  intermittent,  so  that  the  unspeakable 
charm  which  their  objects  possess  for  a  moment  is 
lost  immediately  and  becomes  unintelligible  to  a 
chilled  and  cheated  reflection.  The  situation, 
when  yet  unrealised,  irresistibly  solicited  the  will 
and  seemed  to  promise  incomparable  ecstasy;  and 
perhaps  it  yields  an  indescribable  moment  of  ex- 
citement and  triumph — a  moment  only  half-appro- 
priated into  waking  experience,  so  fleeting  is  it, 
and  so  unfit  the  mind  to  possess  or  retain  its 
tenser  attitudes.  The  same  situation,  if  revived 
in  memory  when  the  system  is  in  an  opposite 
and  relaxed  state,  forfeits  all  power  to  attract 
and  fills  the  mind  rather  with  aversion  and  dis- 


244  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

gust.  For  all  violent  pleasures,  as  Shakespeare 
says,  are  cruel  and  not  to  be  trusted. 

A  bliss  in  proof  and,  proved,  a  very  woe: 
Before,  a  joy  proposed ;  behind,  a  dream     .     .    . 
Enjoyed  no  sooner  but  despised  straight; 
Past  reason  hunted  and,  no  sooner  had, 
Past  reason  hated. 

Methods  of  ^^^t  reason,  indeed.     For  although 

control.  an  impulsive  injustice  is  inherent  in 

the  very  nature  of  representation  and  cannot  be 
overcome  altogether,  yet  reason,  by  attending  to 
all  the  evidences  that  can  be  gathered  and  by  con- 
fronting the  first  pronouncement  by  others  fetched 
from  every  quarter  of  experience,  has  povrer  to 
minimise  the  error  and  reach  a  practically  just 
estimate  of  absent  values.  This  achieved  right- 
ness  can  be  tested  by  comparing  two  experiences, 
each  when  it  is  present,  with  the  same  conventional 
permanent  object  chosen  to  be  their  expression. 
A  love-song,  for  instance,  can  be  pronounced  ade- 
quate or  false  by  various  lovers;  and  it  can  thus 
remain  a  sort  of  index  to  the  fleeting  sentiments 
once  confronted  with  it.  Eeason  has,  to  be  sure, 
no  independent  method  of  discovering  values. 
They  must  be  rated  as  the  sensitive  balance  of 
present  inclination,  when  completely  laden,  shows 
them  to  stand.  In  estimating  values  reason  is 
reduced  to  data  furnished  by  the  mechanical  proc- 
esses of  ideation  and  instinct,  as  in  framing  all 
knowledge;  an  absent  joy  can  only  be  represented 
by  a  tinge  of  emotion  dyeing  an  image  that  pictures 


MEASURE   OF    VALUES  245 

the  situation  in  which  the  joy  was  felt;  but  the 
suggested  value  being  once  projected  into  the 
potential  world,  that  land  of  inferred  being,  this 
projection  may  be  controlled  and  corroborated  by 
other  suggestions  and  associations  relevant  to  it, 
which  it  is  the  function  of  reason  to  collect  and 
compare.  A  right  estimate  of  absent  values  must 
be  conventional  and  mediated  by  signs.  Direct 
sympathies,  which  suffice  for  instinctive  present 
co-operation,  fail  to  transmit  alien  or  opposite 
pleasures.  They  over-emphasise  momentary  rela- 
tions, while  they  necessarily  ignore  permanent 
bonds.  Therefore  the  same  intellect  that  puts  a 
mechanical  reality  behind  perception  must  put  a 
moral  reality  behind  sympathy. 
Example  of  ^^mc,  for  example,  is  a  good;  its 

fame.  value  ariscs  from  a  certain  movement 

of  will  and  emotion  which  is  elicited  by  the 
thought  that  one's  name  might  be  associated  with 
great  deeds  and  with  the  memory  of  them.  The 
glow  of  this  thought  bathes  the  object  it  describes, 
so  that  fame  is  felt  to  have  a  value  quite  distinct 
from  that  which  the  expectation  of  fame  may  have 
in  the  present  moment.  Should  this  expectation 
be  foolish  and  destined  to  prove  false,  it  would 
have  no  value,  and  be  indeed  the  more  ludicrous 
and  repulsive  the  more  pleasure  its  dupe  took  in 
it,  and  the  longer  his  illusion  lasted.  The  heart 
is  resolutely  set  on  its  object  and  despises  its  ovm 
phenomena,  not  reflecting  that  its  emotions  have 
first  revealed  that  object's  worth  and  alone  can 


246  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

maintain  it.  For  if  a  man  cares  nothing  for 
fame,  what  value  has  it? 

This  projection  of  interest  into  excellence 
takes  place  mechanically  and  is  in  the  first 
instance  irrational.  Did  all  glow  die  out  from 
memory  and  expectation,  the  events  represented 
remaining  unchanged,  we  should  be  incapable 
of  assigning  any  value  to  those  events,  just 
as,  if  eyes  were  lacking,  we  should  be  in- 
capable of  assigning  colour  to  the  world,  which 
would,  notwithstanding,  remain  as  it  is  at  pres- 
ent. So  fame  could  never  be  regarded  as  a  good 
if  the  idea  of  fame  gave  no  pleasure;  yet  now, 
because  the  idea  pleases,  the  reality  is  regarded  as 
a  good,  absolute  and  intrinsic.  This  moral  hypos- 
tasis involved  in  the  love  of  fame  could  never  be 
rationalised,  but  would  subsist  unmitigated  or  die 
out  unobserved,  were  it  not  associated  with  other 
conceptions  and  other  habits  of  estimating  values. 
For  the  passions  are  humanised  only  by  being 
juxtaposed  and  forced  to  live  together.  As  fame 
is  not  man's  only  goal  and  the  realisation  of  it 
comes  into  manifold  relations  with  other  interests 
no  less  vivid,  we  are  able  to  criticise  the  impulse 
to  pursue  it. 

Fame  may  be  the  consequence  of  benefits  con- 
ferred upon  mankind.  In  that  case  the  ab- 
stract desire  for  fame  would  be  reinforced  and, 
as  it  were,  justified  by  its  congruity  with  the 
more  voluminous  and  stable  desire  to  benefit  our 
fellow-men.     Or,  again,  the  achievements  which 


MEASURE   OF    VALUES  247 

insure  fame  and  the  genius  that  wins  it  probably 
involve  a  high  degree  of  vitality  and  many  pro- 
found inward  satisfactions  to  the  man  cf  genius 
himself;  so  that  again  the  abstract  love  of  fame 
would  be  reinforced  by  the  independent  and  more 
rational  desire  for  a  noble  and  comprehensive  ex- 
perience. On  the  other  hand,  the  minds  of  pos- 
terity, whose  homage  is  craved  by  the  ambitious 
man,  will  probably  have  very  false  conceptions  of 
his  thoughts  and  purposes.  What  they  will  call 
by  his  name  will  be,  in  a  great  measure,  a  fiction 
of  their  own  fancy  and  not  his  portrait  at  all. 
Would  Caesar  recognise  himself  in  the  current 
notions  of  him,  drawn  from  some  school-history, 
or  perhaps  from  Shakespeare's  satirical  portrait? 
Would  Christ  recognise  himself  upon  our  altars, 
or  in  the  romances  about  him  constructed  by  im- 
aginative critics?  And  not  only  is  remote  experi- 
ence thus  hopelessly  lost  and  misrepresented,  but 
even  this  nominal  memorial  ultimately  disappears. 
The  love  of  fame,  if  tempered  by  these  and  simi- 
lar considerations,  would  tend  to  take  a  place  in 
man's  ideal  such  as  its  roots  in  human  nature  and 
its  functions  in  human  progress  might  seem  to 
justify.  It  would  be  rationalised  in  the  only 
sense  in  which  any  primary  desire  can  be  rational- 
ised, namely,  by  being  combined  with  all  others 
in  a  consistent  whole.  How  much  of  it  would  sur- 
vive a  thorough  sifting  and  criticism,  may  well 
remain  in  doubt.  The  result  would  naturally  dif- 
fer for  different  temperaments  and  in  different 


248  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

states  of  society.  The  wisest  men,  perhaps,  while 
they  would  continue  to  feel  some  love  of  honour 
and  some  interest  in  their  image  in  other  minds, 
would  yet  wish  that  posterity  might  praise  them 
as  Sallust  praises  Cato  by  saying:  Esse  quam 
videri  honus  maluit;  he  preferred  worth  to  repu- 
tation. 

The  fact  that  value  is  attributed  to 

Disproportion- 
ate interest  in  absent  experience  according  to  the 
the  aesthetic,  y^j^g  experience  has  in  representation 
appears  again  in  one  of  the  most  curious  anoma- 
lies in  human  life — the  exorbitant  interest  which 
thought  and  reflection  take  in  the  form  of  experi- 
ence and  the  slight  account  they  make  of  its  in- 
tensity or  volume.  Sea-sickness  and  child-birth 
when  they  are  over,  the  pangs  of  despised  love 
when  that  love  is  finally  forgotten  or  requited,  the 
travail  of  sin  when  once  salvation  is  assured,  all 
melt  away  and  dissolve  like  a  morning  mist  leav- 
ing a  clear  sky  without  a  vestige  of  sorrow.  So 
also  with  merely  remembered  and  not  reproduc- 
ible pleasures;  the  buoyancy  of  youth,  when  ab- 
surdity is  not  yet  tedious,  the  rapture  of  sport 
or  passion,  the  immense  peace  found  in  a  mysti- 
cal surrender  to  the  universal,  all  these  generous 
ardours  count  for  nothing  when  they  are  once  gone. 
The  memory  of  them  cannot  cure  a  fit  of  the  blues 
nor  raise  an  irritable  mortal  above  some  petty 
act  of  malice  or  vengeance,  or  reconcile  him  to 
foul  weather.  An  ode  of  Horace,  on  the  other 
,    hand,  a  scientific  monograph,  or  a  well-written 


MEASURE   OF    VALUES  249 

page  of  music  is  a  better  antidote  to  melancholy 
than  thinking  on  all  the  happiness  which  one's 
own  life  or  that  of  the  universe  may  ever  have 
contained.  Why  should  overwhelming  masses  of 
suffering  and  joy  affect  imagination  so  little  while 
it  responds  sympathetically  to  aesthetic  and  intel- 
lectual irritants  of  very  slight  intensity,  objects 
that,  it  must  be  confessed,  are  of  almost  no  impor- 
tance to  the  welfare  of  mankind  ?  Why  should  we 
be  so  easily  awed  by  artistic  genius  and  exalt  men 
whose  works  we  know  only  by  name,  perhaps,  and 
whose  influence  upon  society  has  been  infinitesimal, 
like  a  Pindar  or  a  Leonardo,  while  we  regard  great 
merchants  and  inventors  as  ignoble  creatures  in 
comparison  ?  Why  should  we  smile  at  the  inscrip- 
tion in  Westminster  Abbey  which  calls  the  inventor 
of  the  spinning-jenny  one  of  the  true  benefactors 
of  mankind?  Is  it  not  probable,  on  the  whole, 
that  he  has  had  a  greater  and  less  equivocal  in- 
fluence on  human  happiness  than  Shakespeare 
with  all  his  plays  and  sonnets?  But  the  cheap- 
ness of  cotton  cloth  produces  no  particularly  de- 
lightful image  in  the  fancy  to  be  compared  with 
Hamlet  or  Imogen.  There  is  a  prodigious  selfish- 
ness in  dreams:  they  live  perfectly  deaf  and  in- 
vulnerable amid  the  cries  of  the  real  world. 

The  same  aesthetic  bias  appears  in  the  moral 
sphere.  Utilitarians  have  attempted  to  show  that 
the  human  conscience  commends  precisely  those 
actions  which  tend  to  secure  general  happiness 
and  that  the  notions  of  justice  and  virtue  pre- 


250  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

vailing  in  any  age  vary  with  its  social  economy 
and  the  j)rizes  it  is  able  to  attain.  And,  if  due 
allowance  is  made  for  the  complexity  of  the  sub- 
ject, we  may  reasonably  admit  that  the  precepts 
of  obligatory  morality  bear  this  relation  to  the 
general  welfare;  thus  virtue  means  courage  in  a 
soldier,  probity  in  a  merchant,  and  chastity  in  a 
woman.  But  if  we  turn  from  the  morality  re- 
quired of  all  to  the  type  regarded  as  perfect  and 
ideal,  we  find  no  such  correspondence  to  the  bene- 
fits involved.  The  selfish  imagination  intervenes 
here  and  attributes  an  absolute  and  irrational  value 
to  those  figures  that  entertain  it  with  the  most 
^    ,.     ,        absorbinsr     and     dreamful     emotions. 

Irrational  ° 

reUgious  The  character  of  Christ,  for  instance, 
auegiance.  which  evcu  the  least  orthodox  among 
us  are  in  the  habit  of  holding  up  as  a  perfect 
model,  is  not  the  character  of  a  benefactor  but  of 
a  martyr,  a  spirit  from  a  higher  world  lacerated 
in  its  passage  through  this  uncomprehending  and 
perverse  existence,  healing  and  forgiving  out  of 
sheer  compassion,  sustained  by  his  inner  affinities 
to  the  supernatural,  and  absolutely  disenchanted 
with  all  earthly  or  political  goods.  Christ  did  not 
suffer,  like  Prometheus,  for  having  bestowed  or 
wished  to  bestow  any  earthly  blessing:  the  only 
blessing  he  bequeathed  was  the  image  of  himself 
upon  the  cross,  whereby  men  might  be  comforted 
in  their  own  sorrows,  rebuked  in  their  worldliness, 
driven  to  put  their  trust  in  the  supernatural,  and 
united,  by  their  common  indifference  to  the  world, 


MEASURE   OF   VALUES  251 

in  one  mystic  brotherhood.  As  men  learned  these 
lessons,  or  were  inwardly  ready  to  learn  them, 
they  recognised  more  and  more  clearly  in  Jesus 
their  heaven-sent  redeemer,  and  in  following  their 
own  conscience  and  desperate  idealism  into  the 
desert  or  the  cloister,  in  ignoring  all  civic  virtues 
and  allowing  the  wealth,  art,  and  knowledge  of 
the  pagan  world  to  decay,  they  began  what  they 
felt  to  be  an  imitation  of  Christ. 

All  natural  impulses,  all  natural  ideals,  subsisted 
of  course  beneath  this  theoretic  asceticism,  writhed 
under  its  unearthly  control,  and  broke  out  in  fre- 
quent violent  irruptions  against  it  in  the  life  of 
each  man  as  well  as  in  the  course  of  history.  Yet 
the  image  of  Christ  remained  in  men's  hearts  and 
retained  its  marvellous  authority,  so  that  even  now, 
when  so  many  who  call  themselves  Christians,  be- 
ing pure  children  of  nature,  are  without  the  least 
understanding  of  what  Christianity  came  to  do  in 
the  world,  they  still  offer  his  person  and  words  a 
sincere  if  inarticulate  worship,  trying  to  transform 
that  sacrificial  and  crucified  spirit,  as  much  as 
their  bungling  fancy  can,  into  a  patron  of  Philis- 
tia  Felix.  Why  this  persistent  adoration  of  a  char- 
acter that  is  the  extreme  negation  of  all  that  these 
good  souls  inwardly  value  and  outwardly  pursue? 
Because  the  image  of  Christ  and  the  associations 
of  his  religion,  apart  from  their  original  import, 
remain  rooted  in  the  mind :  they  remain  the  focus 
for  such  wayward  emotions  and  mystic  intuitions 
as  their  magnetism  can  still  attract,  and  the  value 


252  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

which  this  hallowed  compound  possesses  in  repre- 
sentation is  transferred  to  its  nominal  object,  and 
Christ  is  the  conventional  name  for  all  the  im- 
pulses of  religion,  no  matter  how  opposite  to  the 
Christian. 

Symbols,  when  their  significance  has  been  great, 
outlive  their  first  significance.  The  image  of 
Christ  was  a  last  refuge  to  the  world;  it  was 
a  consolation  and  a  new  ground  for  hope,  from 
which  no  misfortune  could  drive  the  worship- 
per. Its  value  as  an  idea  was  therefore  im- 
mense, as  to  the  lover  the  idea  of  his  untasted 
joys,  or  to  the  dying  man  the  idea  of  health  and 
invigorating  sunshine.  The  votary  can  no  more 
Pathetic  ^sk  himself  whether  his  deity,  in  its 

ideauzations.  total  operation,  has  really  blessed  him 
and  deserved  his  praise  than  the  lover  can  ask  if 
his  lady  is  worth  pursuing  or  the  expiring  crip- 
ple whether  it  would  be,  in  very  truth,  a  benefit 
to  be  once  more  young  and  whole.  That  life  is 
worth  living  is  the  most  necessary  of  assumptions 
and,  were  it  not  assumed,  the  most  impossible  of 
conclusions.  Experience,  by  its  passive  weight  of 
joy  and  sorrow,  can  neither  inspire  nor  prevent 
enthusiasm ;  only  a  present  ideal  will  avail  to  move 
the  will  and,  if  realised,  to  justify  it.  A  saint's 
halo  is  an  optical  illusion;  it  glorifies  his  actions 
whatever  their  eventual  influence  in  the  world, 
because  they  seem  to  have,  when  rehearsed  dramat- 
ically, some  tenderness  or  rapture  or  miracle  about 
them. 


MEASURE   OF    VALUES  253 

Thus  it  appears  that  the  great  figures  of  art  or 
religion,  together  with  all  historic  and  imaginative 
ideals,  advance  insensibly  on  the  values  they  rep- 
resent. The  image  has  more  lustre  than  the  orig- 
inal, and  is  often  the  more  important  and  influen- 
tial fact.  Things  are  esteemed  as  they  weigh  in 
representation.  A  memorable  thing,  people  say  in 
their  eulogies,  little  thinking  to  touch  the  ground 
of  their  praise.  For  things  are  called  great 
because  they  are  memorable,  they  are  not  remem- 
bered because  they  were  great.  The  deepest 
pangs,  the  highest  joys,  the  widest  influences  are 
lost  to  apperception  in  its  haste,  and  if  in  some 
rational  moment  reconstructed  and  acknowledged, 
are  soon  forgotten  again  and  cut  off  from  living 
consideration.  But  the  emptiest  experience,  even 
the  most  pernicious  tendency,  if  embodied  in  a 
picturesque  image,  if  reverberating  in  the  mind 
with  a  pleasant  echo,  is  idolised  and  enshrined. 
Fortunate  indeed  was  Achilles  that  Homer  sang 
of  him,  and  fortunate  the  poets  that  make  a  pub- 
lic titillation  out  of  their  sorrows  and  ignorance. 
This  imputed  and  posthumous  fortune  is  the 
only  happiness  they  have.  The  favours  of  memory 
are  extended  to  those  feeble  realities  and  denied 
to  the  massive  substance  of  daily  experience. 
When  life  dies,  when  what  was  present  becomes  a 
memory,  its  ghost  flits  still  among  the  living, 
feared  or  worshipped  not  for  the  experience  it 
once  possessed  but  for  the  aspect  it  now  wears. 
Yet  this  injustice  in  representation,  speculatively 


254  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

SO  offensive,  is  practically  excusable;  for  it  is  in 
one  sense  right  and  useful  that  all  things,  what- 
ever their  original  or  inherent  dignity,  should  be 
valued  at  each  moment  only  by  their  present  func- 
tion and  utility. 
,     .. ,,  .  The   error   involved   in   attributing 

Inevitable  im-  ° 

puisiveness  in  valuc  to  the  past  is  naturally  aggra- 
prophecy.  yated  whcu  valucs  are  to  be  assigned 
to  the  future.  In  the  latter  case  imagination  can- 
not be  controlled  by  circumstantial  evidence,  and 
is  consequently  the  only  basis  for  judgment.  But 
as  the  conception  of  a  thing  naturally  evokes  an 
emotion  different  from  that  involved  in  its  pres- 
ence, ideals  of  what  is  desirable  for  the  future  con- 
tain no  warrant  that  the  experience  desired  would, 
when  actual,  prove  to  be  acceptable  and  good.  An 
ideal  carries  no  extrinsic  assurance  that  its  realisa- 
tion would  be  a  benefit.  To  convince  ourselves 
that  an  ideal  has*  rational  authority  and  repre- 
sents a  better  experience  than  the  actual  condition 
it  is  contrasted  with,  we  must  control  the  prophetic 
image  by  as  many  circumlocutions  as  possible. 
„    ,  ,  As  in  the  case  of  fame,  we  must  but- 

The  test  a  ' 

controUed  tress  or  modify  our  spontaneous  judg- 
present  ideal.    ^^^^^  ^-^j^  ^j^  ^^le  other  judgments  that 

the  object  envisaged  can  prompt:  we  must  make 
our  ideal  harmonise  with  all  experience  rather 
than  with  a  part  only.  The  possible  error  re- 
mains even  then ;  but  a  practical  mind  will  always 
accept  the  risk  of  error  when  it  has  made  every 
possible  correction.     A  rational  will  is  not  a  will 


MEASURE    OF    VALUES  255 

that  has  reason  for  its  basis  or  that  possesses  any 
other  proof  that  its  realisation  would  be  possible 
or  good  than  the  oracle  which  a  living  will  inspires 
and  pronounces.  The  rationality  possible  to  the 
will  lies  not  in  its  source  but  in  its  method.  An 
ideal  cannot  wait  for  its  realisation  to  prove  its 
validity.  To  deserve  loyalty  it  needs  only  to  be 
adequate  as  an  ideal,  that  is,  to  express  com- 
pletely what  the  soul  at  present  demands,  and  to 
do  justice  to  all  extant  interests. 


CHAPTER   XI 

SOME  ABSTRACT  CONDITIONS  OF  THE  IDEAL 

The  ultimate        Reason's  function  is  to  embody  the 
*°"*  f  good,  but  the  test  of  excellence  is  itself 

resultant  °        ^ 

ideal;  therefore  before  we  can  assure 
ourselves  that  reason  has  been  manifested  in  any 
given  case  we  must  make  out  the  reasonableness 
of  the  ideal  that  inspires  us.  And  in  general, 
before  we  can  convince  ourselves  that  a  Life  of 
Reason,  or  practice  guided  by  science  and  directed 
toward  spiritual  goods,  is  at  all  worth  having,  we 
must  make  out  the  possibility  and  character  of 
its  ultimate  end.  Yet  each  ideal  is  its  own  justi- 
fication; so  that  the  only  sense  in  which  an  ulti- 
mate end  can  be  established  and  become  a  test  of 
general  progress  is  this:  that  a  harmony  and  co- 
operation of  impulses  should  be  conceived,  leading 
to  the  maximum  satisfaction  possible  in  the  whole 
community  of  spirits  affected  by  our  action. 
Now,  without  considering  for  the  present  any  con- 
crete Utopia,  such,  for  instance,  as  Plato's  Repub- 
lic or  the  heavenly  beatitude  described  by  theo- 
logians, we  may  inquire  what  formal  qualities  are 
imposed  on  the  ideal  by  its  nature  and  function 

266 


CONDITIONS  OF  THE  IDEAL  257 

and  by  the  relation  it  bears  to  experience  and  to 

desire. 

_,        .  ,.  The  ideal  has  the  same  relation  to 

Demands  the 

substance  of     given  demands  that  the  reality  has  to 
ideals.  given  perceptions.     In  the  face  of  the 

ideal,  particular  demands  forfeit  their  authority 
and  the  goods  to  which  a  particular  being  may 
aspire  cease  to  be  absolute;  nay,  the  satisfaction 
of  desire  comes  to  appear  an  indifferent  or  unholy 
thing  when  compared  or  opposed  to  the  ideal  to 
be  realised.  So,  precisely,  in  perception,  flying 
impressions  come  to  be  regarded  as  illusory  when 
contrasted  with  a  stable  conception  of  reality. 
Yet  of  course  flying  impressions  are  the  only 
material  out  of  which  that  conception  can  be 
formed.  Life  itself  is  a  flying  impression,  and 
had  we  no  personal  and  instant  experience,  impor- 
tuning us  at  each  successive  moment,  we  should 
have  no  occasion  to  ask  for  a  reality  at  all,  and 
no  materials  out  of  which  to  construct  so  gratui- 
tous an  idea.  In  the  same  way  present  demands 
are  the  only  materials  and  occasions  for  any  ideal : 
without  demands  the  ideal  would  have  no  locus 
standi  or  foothold  in  the  world,  no  power,  no 
charm,  and  no  prerogative.  If  the  ideal  can  con- 
front particular  desires  and  put  them  to  shame, 
that  happens  only  because  the  ideal  is  the  object 
of  a  more  profound  and  voluminous  desire  and 
embodies  the  good  which  they  blindly  and  per- 
haps deviously  pursue.  Demands  could  not  be 
misdirected,  goods  sought  could  not  be  false,  if 
Vol.  L-17 


258  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

the  standard  by  which  they  are  to  be  corrected 
were  not  constructed  out  of  them.  Otherwise 
each  demand  would  render  its  object  a  detached, 
absolute,  and  unimpeachable  good.  But  when 
each  desire  in  turn  has  singed  its  wings  and  re- 
tired before  some  disillusion,  reflection  may  set 
in  to  suggest  residual  satisfactions  that  may  still 
be  possible,  or  some  shifting  of  the  ground  by 
which  much  of  what  was  hoped  for  may  yet  be 
attained. 

The  force  for  this  new  trial  is  but  the  old 
impulse  renewed;  this  new  hope  is  a  justified 
remnant  of  the  old  optimism.  Each  passion,  in 
this  second  campaign,  takes  the  field  conscious  that 
it  has  indomitable  enemies  and  ready  to  sign  a 
reasonable  peace,  and  even  to  capitulate  before 
superior  forces.  Such  tameness  may  be  at  first 
merely  a  consequence  of  exhaustion  and  prudence; 
but  a  mortal  will,  though  absolute  in  its  deliver- 
ances, is  very  far  from  constant,  and  its  sacrifices 
soon  constitute  a  habit,  its  exile  a  new  home. 
The  old  ambition,  now  proved  to  be  unrealisable, 
begins  to  seem  capricious  and  extravagant;  the 
circle  of  possible  satisfactions  becomes  the  field  of 
Discipline  of  Conventional  happiness.  Experience, 
the  wiu.  which  brings  about  this  humbler  and 

more  prosaic  state  of  mind,  has  its  own  imagina- 
tive fruits.  Among  those  forces  which  compelled 
each  particular  impulse  to  abate  its  pretensions, 
the  most  conspicuous  were  other  impulses,  other 
interests  active  in  oneself  and  in  one's  neighbours. 


CONDITIONS  OF  THE  IDEAL  259 

When  the  power  of  these  alien  demands  is  recog- 
nised they  begin,  in  a  physical  way,  to  be  re- 
spected; when  an  adjustment  to  them  is  sought 
they  begin  to  be  understood,  for  it  is  only  by 
studying  their  expression  and  tendency  that  the 
degree  of  their  hostility  can  be  measured.  But  to 
understand  is  more  than  to  forgive,  it  is  to  adopt ; 
and  the  passion  that  thought  merely  to  withdraw 
into  a  sullen  and  maimed  self-indulgence  can  feel 
itself  expanded  by  sympathies  which  in  its  pri- 
mal vehemence  it  would  have  excluded  altogether. 
Experience,  in  bringing  humility,  brings  intelli- 
gence also.  Personal  interests  begin  to  seem  rela- 
tive, factors  only  in  a  general  voluminous  welfare 
expressed  in  many  common  institutions  and  arts, 
moulds  for  whatever  is  communicable  or  rational 
in  every  passion.  Each  original  impulse,  when 
^        ^       ^  trimmed  down  more  or  less  according 

Demands  made  ° 

practical  and  to  its  degree  of  savagcncss,  can  then 
consistent.  inhabit  the  state,  and  every  good,  when 
sufficiently  transfigured,  can  be  found  again  in  the 
general  ideal.  The  factors  may  indeed  often  be 
unrecognisable  in  the  result,  so  much  does  the 
process  of  domestication  transform  them;  but  the 
interests  that  animated  them  survive  this  disci- 
pline and  the  new  purpose  is  really  esteemed ;  else 
the  ideal  would  have  no  moral  force.  An  ideal 
representing  no  living  interest  would  be  irrelevant 
to  practice,  just  as  a  conception  of  reality  would 
be  irrelevant  to  perception  which  should  not  be 
composed  of  the  materials  that  sense  supplies,  or 


260  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

should  not  re-embody  actual  sensations  in  an  intel- 
ligible system. 

The  ideal  Here  we  have,  then,  one  condition 

natural.  which  the  ideal  must  fulfil :  it  must  be 

a  resultant  or  synthesis  of  impulses  already  afoot. 
An  ideal  out  of  relation  to  the  actual  demands  of 
living  beings  is  so  far  from  being  an  ideal  that  it 
is  not  even  a  good.  The  pursuit  of  it  would  be 
not  the  acme  but  the  atrophy  of  moral  endeavour. 
Mysticism  and  asceticism  run  into  this  danger, 
when  the  intent  to  be  faithful  to  a  supreme  good 
too  symbolically  presented  breeds  a  superstitious 
repugnance  toward  everything  naturally  prized. 
So  also  an  artificial  scepticism  can  regard  all  ex- 
perience as  deceptive,  by  contrasting  it  with  the 
chimera  of  an  absolute  reality.  As  an  absolute 
reality  would  be  indescribable  and  without  a  func- 
tion in  the  elucidation  of  phenomena,  so  a  supreme 
good  which  was  good  for  nobody  would  be  without 
conceivable  value.  Eespect  for  such  an  idol  is  a 
dialectical  superstition;  and  if  zeal  for  that  shib- 
boleth should  actually  begin  to  inhibit  the  exercise 
of  intelligent  choice  or  the  development  of  appre- 
ciation for  natural  pleasures,  it  would  constitute 
a  reversal  of  the  Life  of  Reason  which,  if  persist- 
ently indulged  in,  could  only  issue  in  madness  or 
revert  to  imbecility. 

Need  of  unity  ^0  l^ss  important,  howcvcr,  than 
and  finality,  this  basis  which  the  ideal  must  have 
in  extant  demands,  is  the  harmony  with  which 
reason  must  endow  it.     If  without  the  one  the 


CONDITIONS  OF  THE  IDEAL  261 

ideal  loses  its  value,  without  the  other  it  loses  its 
finality.  Human  nature  is  fluid  and  imperfect; 
its  demands  are  expressed  in  incidental  desires, 
elicited  by  a  variety  of  objects  which  perhaps  can- 
not coexist  in  the  world.  If  we  merely  trans- 
cribe these  miscellaneous  demands  or  allow  these 
floating  desires  to  dictate  to  us  the  elements  of  the 
ideal,  we  shall  never  come  to  a  Whole  or  to  an 
End.  One  new  fancy  after  another  will  seem  an 
embodiment  of  perfection,  and  we  shall  contradict 
each  expression  of  our  ideal  by  every  other.  A 
Ideals  of  Certain   school   of   philosophy — if   we 

nothing.  may  give  that  name  to  the  systematic 

neglect  of  reason— has  so  immersed  itself  in  the 
contemplation  of  this  sort  of  inconstancy,  which  is 
indeed  prevalent  enough  in  the  world,  that  it  has 
mistaken  it  for  a  normal  and  necessary  process. 
The  greatness  of  the  ideal  has  been  put  in  its 
vagueness  and  in  an  elasticity  which  makes  it 
wholly  indeterminate  and  inconsistent.  The  goal 
of  progress,  beside  being  thus  made  to  lie  at  every 
point  of  the  compass  in  succession,  is  removed  to 
an  infinite  distance,  whereby  the  possibility  of  at- 
taining it  is  denied  and  progress  itself  is  made 
illusory.  For  a  progress  must  be  directed  to  at- 
taining some  definite  type  of  life,  the  counterpart 
of  a  given  natural  endowment,  and  nothing  can 
be  called  an  improvement  which  does  not  contain 
an  appreciable  benefit.  A  victory  would  be  a 
mockery  that  left  us,  for  some  new  reason,  as  much 
impeded  as  before  and  as  far  removed  from  peace. 


262  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

The  picture  of  life  as  an  eternal  war  for  illusory- 
ends  was  drawn  at  first  by  satirists,  unhappily  with 
too  much  justification  in  the  facts.  Some  grosser 
minds,  too  undisciplined  to  have  ever  pursued  a 
good  either  truly  attainable  or  truly  satisfactory, 
then  proceeded  to  mistake  that  satire  on  human 
folly  for  a  sober  account  of  the  whole  universe; 
and  finally  others  were  not  ashamed  to  represent 
it  as  the  ideal  itself — so  soon  is  the  dyer's  hand 
subdued  to  what  it  works  in.  A  barbarous  mind 
cannot  conceive  life,  like  health,  as  a  harmony 
continually  preserved  or  restored,  and  containing 
those  natural  and  ideal  activities  which  disease 
merely  interrupts.  Such  a  mind,  never  having 
tasted  order,  cannot  conceive  it,  and  identifies 
progress  with  new  conflicts  and  life  with  continual 
death.  Its  deification  of  unreason,  instability, 
and  strife  comes  partly  from  piety  and  partly 
from  inexperience.  There  is  piety  in  saluting 
nature  in  her  perpetual  flux  and  in  thinking  that 
since  no  equilibrium  is  maintained  for  ever  none, 
perhaps,  deserves  to  be.  There  is  inexperience  in 
not  considering  that  wherever  interests  and  Judg- 
ments exist,  the  natural  flux  has  fallen,  so  to  speak, 
into  a  vortex,  and  created  a  natural  good,  a  cumu- 
lative life,  and  an  ideal  purpose.  Art,  science, 
government,  human  nature  itself,  are  self-defin- 
ing and  self -preserving :  by  partly  fixing  a  struct- 
ure they  fix  an  ideal.  But  the  barbarian  can 
hardly  regard  such  things,  for  to  have  distin- 
guished and  fostered  them  would  be  to  have 
founded  a  civilisation. 


CONDITIONS  OF  THE  IDEAL  263 

Darwin  on  Eeason's   function   in   defining  the 

moral  sense.  {^qqI  jg  j^  principle  extremely  simple, 
although  all  time  and  all  existence  would  have  to 
be  gathered  in  before  the  applications  of  that 
principle  could  be  exhausted.  A  better  example 
of  its  essential  working  could  hardly  be  found 
than  one  which  Darwin  gives  to  illustrate  the 
natural  origin  of  moral  sense.  A  swallow,  im- 
pelled by  migratory  instincts  to  leave  a  nest  full 
of  unfledged  young,  would  endure  a  moral  conflict. 
The  more  lasting  impulse,  memory  being  assumed, 
would  prompt  a  moral  judgment  when  it  emerged 
again  after  being  momentarily  obscured  by  an  in- 
termittent passion.  "  While  the  mother  bird  is 
feeding  or  brooding  over  her  nestlings,  the  mater- 
nal instinct  is  probably  stronger  than  the  migra- 
tory; but  the  instinct  which  is  more  persistent 
gains  the  victory,  and  at  last,  at  a  moment  when 
her  young  ones  are  not  in  sight,  she  takes  flight 
and  deserts  them.  When  arrived  at  the  end  of 
her  long  journey,  and  the  migratory  instinct  ceases 
to  act,  what  an  agony  of  remorse  each  bird  would 
feel  if,  from  being  endowed  with  great  mental 
activity,  she  could  not  prevent  the  image  continu- 
ally passing  before  her  mind  of  her  young  ones 
perishing  in  the  bleak  north  from  cold  and 
hunger."*  She  would  doubtless  upbraid  herself, 
like  any  sinner,  for  a  senseless  perfidy  to  her  own 
dearest  good.  The  perfidy,  however,  was  not 
wholly  senseless,  because  the  forgotten  instinct 
*  Descent  of  Man,  chapter  iii. 


264  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

was  not  less  natural  and  necessary  than  the  re- 
membered one,  and  its  satisfaction  no  less  true. 
Temptation  has  the  same  basis  as  duty.  The  dif- 
ference is  one  of  volume  and  permanence  in  the 
rival  satisfactions,  and  the  attitude  conscience  will 
assume  toward  these  depends  more  on  the  repre- 
sentability  of  the  demands  compared  than  on  their 
original  vehemence  or  ultimate  results. 

A   passionate   conscience  may  thus 

Conscience  '■  •' 

and  reason  arisc  in  the  play  of  impulses  differing 
compared.  ^^  permanence,  without  involving  a 
judicial  exercise  of  reason.  Nor  does  such  a  con- 
science involve  a  synthetic  ideal,  but  only  the  ideal 
presence  of  particular  demands.  Conflicts  in  the 
conscience  are  thus  quite  natural  and  would  con- 
tinually occur  but  for  the  narrowness  that  com- 
monly characterises  a  mind  inspired  by  passion. 
A  life  of  sin  and  repentance  is  as  remote  as  pos- 
sible from  a  Life  of  Eeason.  Yet  the  same  situa- 
tion which  produces  conscience  and  the  sense  of 
duty  is  an  occasion  for  applying  reason  to  action 
and  for  forming  an  ideal,  so  soon  as  the  demands 
and  satisfactions  concerned  are  synthesised  and 
balanced  imaginatively.  The  stork  might  do  more 
than  feel  the  conflict  of  his  two  impulses,  he 
might  do  more  than  embody  in  alternation  the 
eloquence  of  two  hostile  thoughts.  He  might  pass 
judgment  upon  them  impartially  and,  in  the  felt 
presence  of  both,  conceive  what  might  be  a  union 
or  compromise  between  them. 

This  resultant  object  of  pursuit,  conceived  in 


CONDITIONS  OF  THE  IDEAL  265 

reflection  and  in  itself  the  initial  goal  of  neither 
impulse,  is  the  ideal  of  a  mind  occupied  by  the 
two :  it  is  the  aim  prescribed  by  reason  under 
the  circumstances.  It  differs  from  the  prescrip- 
tion of  conscience,  in  that  conscience  is  often 
the  spokesman  of  one  interest  or  of  a  group  of 
interests  in  opposition  to  other  primary  impulses 
which  it  would  annul  altogether;  while  reason 
and  the  ideal  are  not  active  forces  nor  embodi- 
ments of  passion  at  all,  but  merely  a  method 
by  which  objects  of  desire  are  compared  in  re- 
flection. The  goodness  of  an  end  is  felt  in- 
wardly by  conscience;  by  reason  it  can  be  only 
taken  upon  trust  and  registered  as  a  fact.  For 
conscience  the  object  of  an  opposed  will  is  an  evil, 
for  reason  it  is  a  good  on  the  same  ground  as  any 
other  good,  because  it  is  pursued  by  a  natural  im- 
pulse and  can  bring  a  real  satisfaction.  Con- 
science, in  fine,  is  a  party  to  moral  strife,  reason 
an  observer  of  it  who,  however,  plays  the  most 
important  and  beneficent  part  in  the  outcome  by 
suggesting  the  terms  of  peace.  This  suggested 
peace,  inspired  by  sympathy  and  by  knowledge  of 
the  world,  is  the  ideal,  which  borrows  its  value 
and  practical  force  from  the  irrational  impulses 
which  it  embodies,  and  borrows  its  final  authority 
from  the  truth  with  which  it  recognises  them  all 
and  the  necessity  by  which  it  imposes  on  each 
such  sacrifices  as  are  requisite  to  a  general  har- 
mony. 

Could  each  impulse,  apart  from  reason,  gain  per- 


266  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

feet  satisfaction,  it  would  doubtless  laugh  at  jus- 
tice. The  divine,  to  exercise  suasion,  must  use  an 
argumentum  ad  hominem;  reason  must  justify 
itself  to  the  heart.  But  perfect  satisfaction  is 
what  an  irresponsible  impulse  can  never  hope  for : 
all  other  impulses,  though  absent  per- 
poses  no  new  haps  f  rom  the  mind,  are  none  the  less 
sacnfice.  present  in  nature  and  have  possession 

of  the  field  through  their  physical  basis.  They 
offer  effectual  resistance  to  a  reckless  intruder. 
To  disregard  them  is  therefore  to  gain  nothing: 
reason,  far  from  creating  the  partial  renunciation 
and  proportionate  sacrifices  which  it  imposes, 
really  minimises  them  by  making  them  voluntary 
and  fruitful.  The  ideal,  which  may  seem  to  wear 
so  severe  a  frown,  really  fosters  all  possible  pleas- 
ures; what  it  retrenches  is  nothing  to  what  blind 
forces  and  natural  catastrophes  would  otherwise 
cut  off ;  while  it  sweetens  what  it  sanctions,  adding 
to  spontaneous  enjoyments  a  sense  of  moral  secur- 
ity and  an  intellectual  light. 

Those  who  are  guided  only  by  an  irrational 
conscience  can  hardly  understand  what  a  good 
life  would  be.  Their  Utopias  have  to  be  super- 
natural in  order  that  the  irresponsible  rules 
which  they  call  morality  may  lead  by  miracle, 
to  happy  results.  But  such  a  magical  and 
undeserved  happiness,  if  it  were  possible,  would 
be  unsavoury:  only  one  phase  of  human  nature 
would  be  satisfied  by  it,  and  so  impoverished 
an   ideal    cannot   really    attract   the   will.      For 


CONDITIONS  OF  THE  IDEAL  267 

human  nature  has  been  moulded  by  the  same  natu- 
ral forces  among  which  its  ideal  has  to  be  fulfilled, 
and,  apart  from  a  certain  margin  of 

Natural  goods        -i  i      i  -i  j  n 

attainable  and  Wild  hopes  and  extravaganccs,  the 
compatible  in  things  man's  heart  desires  are  attain- 
pnncipe.  ^^^^  Under  his  natural  conditions  and 
would  not  be  attainable  elsewhere.  The  conflict  of 
desires  and  interests  in  the  world  is  not  radical 
any  more  than  man's  dissatisfaction  with  his  own 
nature  can  be ;  for  every  particular  ideal,  being  an 
expression  of  human  nature  in  operation,  must  in 
the  end  involve  the  primary  human  faculties  and 
cannot  be  essentially  incompatible  with  anj  other 
ideal  which  involves  them  too. 

To  adjust  all  demands  to  one  ideal  and  adjust 
that  ideal  to  its  natural  conditions — in  other 
words,  to  live  the  Life  of  Keason — is  something 
perfectly  possible;  for  those  demands,  being  akin 
to  one  another  in  spite  of  themselves,  can  be  bet- 
ter furthered  by  co-operation  than  by  blind  con- 
flict, while  the  ideal,  far  from  demanding  any 
profound  revolution  in  nature,  merely  expresses 
her  actual  tendency  and  forecasts  what  her  per- 
fect functioning  would  be. 

Harmony  the  Reasou  as  such  represents  or  rather 
formal  and  in-  constitutes  a  single  formal  interest,  the 

trinsic  demand  " 

of  reason.  interest  in  harmony.  When  two  in- 
terests are  simultaneous  and  fall  within  one  act  of 
apprehension  the  desirability  of  harmonising 
them  is  involved  in  the  very  effort  to  realise  them 
together.     If  attention  and  imagination  are  steady 


268  THE    LIFE    OF    EEASON 

enougli  to  face  this  implication  and  not  to  allow 
impulse  to  oscillate  between  irreconcilable  tenden- 
cies, reason  comes  into  being.  Henceforth  things 
actual  and  things  desired  are  confronted  by  an 
ideal  which  has  both  pertinence  and  authority. 


CHAPTER   XII 

FLUX  AND  CONSTANCY   IN   HUMAN   NATURE 

Respectable  A  Conception  of  something  called 
tradition  that   j^^nian  nature  arises  not  unnaturally 

human  nature  •' 

is  fixed.  on  observing  the  passions  of  men,  pas- 

sions which  under  various  disguises  seem  to  re- 
appear in  all  ages  and  countries.  The  tendency 
of  Greek  philosophy,  with  its  insistence  on  gen- 
eral concepts,  was  to  define  this  idea  of  human 
nature  still  further  and  to  encourage  the  belief 
that  a  single  and  identical  essence,  present  in  all 
men,  determined  their  powers  and  ideal  destiny. 
Christianity,  while  it  transposed  the  human  ideal 
and  dwelt  on  the  superhuman  affinities  of  man, 
did  not  abandon  the  notion  of  a  specific  humanity. 
On  the  contrary,  such  a  notion  was  implied  in  the 
Fall  and  Redemption,  in  the  Sacraments,  and  in 
the  universal  validity  of  Christian  doctrine  and 
precept.  For  if  human  nature  were  not  one,  there 
would  be  no  propriety  in  requiring  all  men  to 
preserve  unanimity  in  faith  or  conformity  in  con- 
duct. Human  nature  was  likewise  the  entity 
which  the  English  psychologists  set  themselves  to 
describe;  and  Kant  was  so  entirely  dominated  by 
the  notion  of  a  fixed  and  universal  human  nature 

269 


270  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

that  its  constancy,  in  his  opinion,  was  the  source 
of  all  natural  as  well  as  moral  laws.  Had  he 
doubted  for  a  moment  the  stability  of  human 
nature,  the  foundations  of  his  system  would  have 
fallen  out;  the  forms  of  perception  and  thought 
would  at  once  have  lost  their  boasted  necessity, 
since  to-morrow  might  dawn  upon  new  categories 
and  a  modified  a  priori  intuition  of  space  or  time ; 
and  the  avenue  would  also  have  been  closed  by 
which  man  was  led,  through  his  unalterable  moral 
sentiments,  to  assumptions  about  metaphysical 
truths. 

The  force  of  this  long  tradition  has 

Contrary  cur-  ° 

rents  of  opin-  been  broken,  however,  by  two  influences 
*°°"  of  great  weight   in  recent  times,  the 

theory  of  evolution  and  the  revival  of  pantheism. 
The  first  has  reintroduced  flux  into  the  conception 
Evolution.  of  existence  and  the  second  into  the 
conception  of  values.  If  natural  species  are  fluid 
and  pass  into  one  another,  human  nature  is  merely 
a  name  for  a  group  of  qualities  found  by  chance  in 
certain  tribes  of  animals,  a  group  to  which  new 
qualities  are  constantly  tending  to  attach  them- 
selves while  other  faculties  become  extinct,  now  in 
whole  races,  now  in  sporadic  individuals.  Human 
nature  is  therefore  a  variable,  and  its  ideal  cannot 
have  a  greater  constancy  than  the  demands  to 
which  it  gives  expression.  Nor  can  the  ideal  of 
one  man  or  one  age  have  any  authority  over 
another,  since  the  harmony  existing  in  their  nature 
and  interests  is  accidental  and  each  is  a  transi- 


FLUX   AND   CONSTANCY  271 

tional  phase  in  an  indefinite  evolution.  The  crys- 
tallisation of  moral  forces  at  any  moment  is  con- 
sequently to  be  explained  by  universal,  not  by 
human,  laws;  the  philosopher's  interest  cannot  be 
to  trace  the  implications  of  present  and  unstable 
desires,  but  rather  to  discover  the  mechanical  law 
by  which  these  desires  have  been  generated  and 
will  be  transformed,  so  that  they  will  change  irrev- 
ocably both  their  basis  and  their  objects. 
Pantheism.  To  this  picture  of  physical  instabil- 

ity furnished  by  popular  science  are  to  be  added 
the  mystical  self-denials  involved  in  pantheism. 
These  come  to  reinforce  the  doctrine  that  human 
nature  is  a  shifting  thing  with  the  sentiment  that 
it  is  a  finite  and  unworthy  one:  for  every  deter- 
mination of  being,  it  is  said,  has  its  significance 
as  well  as  its  origin  in  the  infinite  continuum  of 
which  it  is  a  part.  Forms  are  limitations,  and 
limitations,  according  to  this  philosophy,  would 
be  defects,  so  that  man's  only  goal  would  be  to 
escape  humanity  and  lose  himself  in  the  divine 
nebula  that  has  produced  and  must  invalidate 
each  of  his  thoughts  and  ideals.  As  there  would 
be  but  one  spirit  in  the  world,  and  that  infinite, 
so  there  would  be  but  one  ideal  and  that  indiscrim- 
inate. The  despair  which  the  naturalist's  view  of 
human  instability  might  tend  to  produce  is  turned 
by  this  mystical  initiation  into  a  sort  of  ecstasy; 
and  the  deluge  of  conformity  suddenly  submerges 
that  Life  of  Reason  which  science  seemed  to  con- 
demn to  gradual  extinction. 


272  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

Keason  is  a  human  function.  Though  the 
name  of  reason  has  been  applied  to  various  alleged 
principles  of  cosmic  life,  vital  or  dialectical,  these 
Instability  principles  all  lack  the  essence  of 
in  existences  rationality,  in  that  they  are  not  con- 
does  not  de-  .  .      .  1        i  •  J-     j_  • 

throne  their  scious  movements  toward  satisfaction, 
ideals.  not,  in  other  words,  moral  and  benefi- 

cent principles  at  all.  Be  the  instability  of 
human  nature  what  it  may,  therefore,  the  insta- 
bility of  reason  is  not  less,  since  reason  is  but  a 
function  of  human  nature.  However  relative  and 
subordinate,  in  a  physical  sense,  human  ideals  may 
be,  these  ideals  remain  the  only  possible  moral 
standards  for  man,  the  only  tests  which  he  can 
apply  for  value  or  authority  in  any  other  quarter. 
And  among  unstable  and  relative  ideals  none  is 
more  relative  and  unstable  than  that  which  trans- 
ports all  value  to  a  universal  law,  itself  indiffer- 
ent to  good  and  evil,  and  worships  it  as  a  deity. 
Such  an  idolatry  would  indeed  be  impossible  if  it 
were  not  partial  and  veiled,  arrived  at  in  follow- 
ing out  some  human  interest  and  clung  to  by  force 
of  moral  inertia  and  the  ambiguity  of  words.  In 
truth  mystics  do  not  practise  so  entire  a  renuncia- 
tion of  reason  as  they  preach :  eternal  validity  and 
the  capacity  to  deal  with  absolute  reality  are  still 
assumed  by  them  to  belong  to  thought  or  at  least 
to  feeling.  Only  they  overlook  in  their  descrip- 
tion of  human  nature  just  that  faculty  which  they 
exercise  in  their  speculation ;  their  map  leaves  out 
the  ground  on  which  they  stand.     The  rest,  which 


FLUX    AND    CONSTANCY  273 

they  are  not  identified  with  for  the  moment,  they 
proceed  to  regard  de  haul  en  has  and  to  discredit 
as  a  momentary  manifestation  of  universal  laws, 
physical  or  divine.  They  forget  that  this  faith 
in  law,  this  absorption  in  the  blank  reality,  this 
enthusiasm  for  the  ultimate  thought,  are  mere 
human  passions  like  the  rest;  that  they  endure 
them  as  they  might  a  fever  and  that  the  animal 
instincts  are  patent  on  which  those  spiritual  yearn- 
ings repose. 

Absolutist  This    last   fact    would    be   nothing 

h^°an''an^d  against  the  feelings  in  question,  if  they 
halting.  wcrc  not  made  vehicles   for  absolute 

revelations.  On  the  contrary,  such  a  relativity  in 
instincts  is  the  source  of  their  importance.  In 
virtue  of  this  relativity  they  have  some  basis  and 
function  in  the  world;  for  did  they  not  repose  on 
human  nature  they  could  never  express  or  trans- 
form it.  Religion  and  philosophy  are  not  always 
beneficent  or  important,  but  when  they  are  it  is 
precisely  because  they  help  to  develop  human 
faculty  and  to  enrich  human  life.  To  imagine 
that  by  means  of  them  we  can  escape  from  human 
nature  and  survey  it  from  without  is  an  ostrich- 
like illusion  obvious  to  all  but  to  the  victim  of  it. 
Such  a  pretension  may  cause  admiration  in  the 
Bchools,  where  self-hypnotisation  is  easy,  but  in 
the  world  it  makes  its  professors  ridiculous.  For 
in  their  eagerness  to  empty  their  mind  of  human 
prejudices  they  reduce  its  rational  burden  to  a 
minimum,  and  if  they  still  continue  to  dogmatise, 
Vol.  L— 18 


274  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

it  is  sport  for  the  satirist  to  observe  what  forgotten 
accident  of  language  or  training  has  survived  the 
crash  of  the  universe  and  made  the  one  demon- 
strable path  to  Absolute  Truth. 
All  science  a  Neither  the  path  of  abstraction  f  ol- 
deuverance  of  ^Q^g^j  j^    ^^^  mvstics,  uor  that  of  direct 

momentary  •'  j  ■> 

thought.  and,  as  it  avers,  unbiassed  observation 

followed  by  the  naturalists,  can  lead  beyond  that 
region  of  common  experience,  traditional  feeling, 
and  conventional  thought  which  all  minds  enter 
at  birth  and  can  elude  only  at  the  risk  of  inward 
collapse  and  extinction.  The  fact  that  observation 
involves  the  senses,  and  the  senses  their  organs, 
is  one  which  a  naturalist  can  hardly  overlook ;  and 
when  we  add  that  logical  habits,  sanctioned  by 
utility,  are  needed  to  interpret  the  data  of  sense, 
the  humanity  of  science  and  all  its  constructions 
becomes  clearer  than  day.  Superstition  itself 
could  not  be  more  human.  The  path  of  unbiassed 
observation  is  not  a  path  away  from  conventional 
life;  it  is  a  progress  in  conventions.  It  improves 
human  belief  by  increasing  the  proportion  of  two 
of  its  ingredients,  attentive  perception  and  prac- 
tical calculus.  The  whole  resulting  vision,  as  it 
is  sustained  from  moment  to  moment  by  present 
experience  and  instinct,  has  no  value  apart  from 
actual  ideals.  And  if  it  proves  human  nature  to 
be  unstable,  it  can  build  that  proof  on  nothing 
more  stable  than  human  faculty  as  at  the  moment 
it  happens  to  be. 

Nor  is  abstraction  a  less  human  process,  as  if 


FLUX    AND    CONSTANCY  275 

by  becoming  very  abstruse  indeed  we  could  hope 
to  become  divine.  Is  it  not  a  commonplace  of  the 
Au  criticism  schools  that  to  form  abstract  ideas  is 
Ukewise.  the  prerogative  of  man's  reason  ?  Is  not 
abstraction  a  method  by  which  mortal  intelligence 
makes  haste?  Is  it  not  the  makeshift  of  a  mind 
overloaded  with  its  experience,  the  trick  of  an  eye 
that  cannot  master  a  profuse  and  ever-changing 
world  ?  Shall  these  diagrams  drawn  in  fancy,  this 
system  of  signals  in  thought,  be  the  Absolute 
Truth  dwelling  within  us?  Do  we  attain  reality 
by  making  a  silhouette  of  our  dreams?  If  the 
scientific  world  be  a  product  of  human  faculties, 
the  metaphysical  world  must  be  doubly  so ;  for  the 
material  there  given  to  human  understanding  is 
here  worked  over  again  by  human  art.  This  con- 
stitutes the  dignity  and  value  of  dialectic,  that  in 
spite  of  appearances  it  is  so  human;  it  bears  to 
experience  a  relation  similar  to  that  which  the  arts 
bear  to  the  same,  where  sensible  images,  selected 
by  the  artist's  genius  and  already  coloured  by  his 
aesthetic  bias,  are  redyed  in  the  process  of  repro- 
duction whenever  he  has  a  great  style,  and  sat- 
urated anew  with  his  mind. 

There  can  be  no  question,  then,  of  eluding 
human  nature  or  of  conceiving  it  and  its  environ- 
ment in  such  a  way  as  to  stop  its  operation.  We 
may  take  up  our  position  in  one  region  of  experi- 
ence or  in  another,  we  may,  in  unconsciousness 
of  the  interests  and  assumptions  that  support  us, 
criticise  the  truth  or  value  of  results  obtained  else- 


276  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

where.  Our  criticism  will  be  solid  in  proportion 
to  the  solidity  of  the  unnamed  convictions  that 
inspire  it,  that  is,  in  proportion  to  the  deep  roots 
and  fruitful  ramifications  which  those  convictions 
may  have  in  human  life.  Ultimate  truth  and 
ultimate  value  will  be  reasonably  attributed  to 
those  ideas  and  possessions  which  can  give  human 
nature,  as  it  is,  the  highest  satisfaction.  We  may 
admit  that  human  nature  is  variable;  but  that 
admission,  if  justified,  will  be  justified  by  the  sat- 
isfaction which  it  gives  human  nature  to  make  it. 
We  might  even  admit  that  human  ideals  are  vain 
but  only  if  they  were  nothing  worth  for  the  attain- 
ment of  the  veritable  human  ideal. 
Origins  in-  The   givcu   Constitution    of   reason, 

essential,  with  whatever  a  dialectical  philosophy 
might  elicit  from  it,  obviously  determines  nothing 
about  the  causes  that  may  have  brought  reason  to 
its  present  pass  or  the  phases  that  may  have  pre- 
ceded its  appearance.  Certain  notions  about 
physics  might  no  doubt  suggest  themselves  to  the 
moralist,  who  never  can  be  the  whole  man;  he 
might  suspect,  for  instance,  that  the  transitive 
intent  of  intellect  and  will  pointed  to  their  vital 
basis.  Transcendence  in  operation  might  seem 
appropriate  only  to  a  being  with  a  history  and 
with  an  organism  subject  to  external  influences, 
whose  mind  should  thus  come  to  represent  not 
merely  its  momentary  state  but  also  its  constitu- 
tive past  and  its  eventual  fortunes.  Such  sugges- 
tions, however,  would  be  extraneous  to  dialectical 


FLUX    AND    CONSTANCY  277 

self-knowledge.     They   would   be   tentative   only, 
and  human  nature  would  be  freely  admitted  to  be 
as  variable,  as  relative,  and  as  transitory  as  the 
natural  history  of  the  universe  might  make  it. 
Ideals  ^^^  error,  however,  would  be  pro- 

functional,  found  and  the  contradiction  hopeless 
if  we  should  deny  the  ideal  authority  of  human 
nature  because  we  had  discovered  its  origin  and 
conditions.  Nature  and  evolution,  let  us  say, 
have  brought  life  to  the  present  form;  but  this 
life  lives,  these  organs  have  determinate  functions, 
and  human  nature,  here  and  now,  in  relation  to 
the  ideal  energies  it  unfolds,  is  a  fundamental 
essence,  a  collection  of  activities  with  determinate 
limits,  relations,  and  ideals.  The  integration  and 
determinateness  of  these  faculties  is  the  condition 
for  any  synthetic  operation  of  reason.  As  the 
structure  of  the  steam-engine  has  varied  greatly 
since  its  first  invention,  and  its  attributions  have 
increased,  so  the  structure  of  human  nature  has 
undoubtedly  varied  since  man  first  appeared  upon 
the  earth;  but  as  in  each  steam-engine  at  each 
moment  there  must  be  a  limit  of  mobility,  a  unity 
of  function  and  a  clear  determination  of  parts  and 
tensions,  so  in  human  nature,  as  found  at  any  time 
in  any  man,  there  is  a  definite  scope  by  virtue  of 
which  alone  he  can  have  a  reliable  memory,  a 
recognisable  character,  a  faculty  of  connected 
thought  and  speech,  a  social  utility,  and  a  moral 
ideal.  On  man's  given  structure,  on  his  activity 
hovering  about  fixed  objects,  depends  the  possibil- 


278  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

ity  of  conceiving  or  testing  any  truth  or  making 

any  progress  in  happiness. 

_,  ,  Thinkers  of  different  experience  and 

They  are  trans-  .  ^ 

ferabie  to  Sim-  Organisation  have  pro  tanto  different 
Uar  beings.  ^^^^^  ^^^  different  moral  laws.  There 
are  limits  to  communication  even  among  beings  of 
the  same  race,  and  the  faculties  and  ideals  of  one 
intelligence  are  not  transferable  without  change  to 
any  other.  If  this  historic  diversity  in  minds 
were  complete,  so  that  each  lived  in  its  ovm  moral 
world,  a  science  of  each  of  these  moral  worlds 
would  still  be  possible  provided  some  inner  fixity 
or  constancy  existed  in  its  meanings.  In  every 
human  thought  together  with  an  immortal  intent 
there  is  a  mortal  and  irrecoverable  perception : 
something  in  it  perishes  instantly,  the  part  that 
can  be  materially  preserved  being  proportionate 
to  the  stability  or  fertility  of  the  organ  that  pro- 
duced it.  If  the  function  is  imitable,  the  object 
it  terminates  in  will  reappear,  and  two  or  more 
moments,  having  the  same  ideal,  will  utter  com- 
parable messages  and  may  perhaps  be  unanimous. 
Unanimity  in  thought  involves  identity  of  func- 
tions and  similarity  in  organs.  These  conditions 
mark  off  the  sphere  of  rational  communication  and 
society;  where  they  fail  altogether  there  is  no 
mutual  intelligence,  no  conversation,  no  moral 
solidarity. 

The  inner  authority  of  reason,  however,  is  no 
more  destroyed  because  it  has  limits  in  physical 
expression  or  because  irrational  things  exist,  thaa 


FLUX    AND   CONSTANCY  279 

the  grammar  of  a  given  language  is  invalidated 
Authority  because  other  languages  do  not  share 
intcmaL  it,  or  because  some  people  break  its 
rules  and  others  are  dumb  altogether.  Innumer- 
able madmen  make  no  difference  to  the  laws  of 
thought,  which  borrow  their  authority  from  the 
inward  intent  and  cogency  of  each  rational  mind. 
Reason,  like  beauty,  is  its  own  excuse  for  being. 
It  is  useful,  indeed,  for  living  well,  when  to  give 
reason  satisfaction  is  made  the  measure  of  good. 
The  true  philosopher,  who  is  not  one  chiefly  by 
profession,  must  be  prepared  to  tread  the  wine- 
press alone.  He  may  indeed  flourish  like  the  bay- 
tree  in  a  grateful  environment,  but  more  often  he 
will  rather  resemble  a  reed  shaken  by  the  wind. 
Whether  starved  or  fed  by  the  accidents  of  fortune 
he  must  find  his  essential  life  in  his  own  ideal. 
In  spiritual  life,  heteronomy  is  suicide.  That 
universal  soul  sometimes  spoken  of,  which  is  to 
harmonise  and  correct  individual  demands,  if  it 
were  a  will  and  an  intelligence  in  act,  would  itself 
be  an  individual  like  the  others;  while  if  it  pos- 
sessed no  will  and  no  intelligence,  such  as  individ- 
uals may  have,  it  would  be  a  physical  force  or 
law,  a  dynamic  system  without  moral  authority 
and  with  a  merely  potential  or  represented  exist- 
ence. For  to  be  actual  and  self-existent  is  to  be 
individual.  The  living  mind  cannot  surrender  its 
rights  to  any  physical  power  or  subordinate  itself 
to  any  figment  of  its  own  art  without  falling  into 
manifest  idolatry. 


280  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

Human  nature,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  the 
transcendental  foundation  of  all  science  and 
morals,  is  a  functional  unity  in  each  man ;  it  is  no 
Reason  auton-  general  OT  abstract  essence,  the  average 
omous.  of  all  men's  characters,  nor  even  the 

complex  of  the  qualities  common  to  all  men.  It 
is  the  entelechy  of  the  living  individual,  be  he 
typical  or  singular.  That  his  type  should  be  odd 
or  common  is  merely  a  physical  accident.  If  he 
can  know  himself  by  expressing  the  entelechy  of 
his  own  nature  in  the  form  of  a  consistent  ideal, 
he  is  a  rational  creature  after  his  own  kind,  even 
if,  like  the  angels  of  Saint  Thomas,  he  be  the  only 
individual  of  his  species.  What  the  majority  of 
human  animals  may  tend  to,  or  what  the  past  or 
future  variations  of  a  race  may  be,  has  nothing  to 
do  with  determining  the  ideal  of  human  nature  in 
a  living  man,  or  in  an  ideal  society  of  men  bound 
together  by  spiritual  kinship.  Otherwise  Plato 
could  not  have  reasoned  well  about  the  republic 
without  adjusting  himself  to  the  politics  of 
Buddha  or  Rousseau,  and  we  should  not  be  able  to 
determine  our  own  morality  vrithout  making  con- 
cessions to  the  cannibals  or  giving  a  vote  to  the 
ants.  Within  the  field  of  an  anthropology  that 
tests  humanity  by  the  skull's  shape,  there  might 
be  room  for  any  number  of  independent  morali- 
ties, and  although,  as  we  shall  see,  there  is  actually 
a  similar  foundation  in  all  human  and  even  in  all 
animal  natures,  which  supports  a  rudimentary 
morality  common  to  all,  yet  a  perfect  morality  is 


FLUX    AND    CONSTANCY  281 

not  really  common  to  any  two  men  nor  to  any  two 
phases  of  the  same  man's  life. 
Its  distribution.  The  distribution  of  reason,  though  a 
subject  irrelevant  to  pure  logic  or  morals,  is  one 
naturally  interesting  to  a  rational  man,  for  he  is 
concerned  to  know  how  far  beings  exist  with  a 
congenial  structure  and  an  ideal  akin  to  his  own. 
That  circumstance  will  largely  influence  his  hap- 
piness if,  being  a  man,  he  is  a  gregarious  and  sym- 
pathetic animal.  His  moral  idealism  itself  will 
crave  support  from  others,  if  not  to  give  it  direc- 
tion, at  least  to  give  it  warmth  and  courage.  The 
best  part  of  wealth  is  to  have  worthy  heirs,  and 
mind  can  be  transmitted  only  to  a  kindred  mind. 
Hostile  natures  cannot  be  brought  together  by 
mutual  invective  nor  harmonised  by  the  brute  de- 
struction and  disappearance  of  either  party.  But 
when  one  or  both  parties  have  actually  disap- 
peared, and  the  combat  has  ceased  for  lack  of  com- 
batants, natures  not  hostile  to  one  another  can  fill 
the  vacant  place.  In  proportion  to  their  inbred 
unanimity  these  will  cultivate  a  similar  ideal  and 
rejoice  together  in  its  embodiment. 

This  has  happened  to  some  extent  in  the  whole 
world,  on  account  of  natural  conditions  which 
limit  the  forms  of  life  possible  in  one  region;  for 
nature  is  intolerant  in  her  laxity  and  punishes  too 
natural  seiec-  great  Originality  and  heresy  with 
uon  of  minds,  death.  Such  moral  integration  has 
occurred  very  markedly  in  every  good  race  and 
society  whose  members,  by  adapting  themselves  to 


282  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

the  same  external  forces,  have  created  and  discov- 
ered their  common  soul.  Spiritual  unity  is  a 
natural  product.  There  are  those  who  see  a  great 
mystery  in  the  presence  of  eternal  values  and  im- 
personal ideals  in  a  moving  and  animal  world,  and 
think  to  solve  that  dualism,  as  they  call  it,  by 
denying  that  nature  can  have  spiritual  functions 
or  spirit  a  natural  cause;  but  nothing  can  be 
simpler  if  we  make,  as  we  should,  existence  the 
test  of  possibility.  Ab  esse  ad  posse  valet  illatio. 
Nature  is  a  perfect  garden  of  ideals,  and  passion 
is  the  perpetual  and  fertile  soil  for  poetry,  myth, 
and  speculation.  Nor  is  this  origin  merely  im- 
puted to  ideals  by  a  late  and  cynical  observer:  it 
is  manifest  in  the  ideals  themselves,  by  their  sub- 
ject matter  and  intent.  For  what  are  ideals 
about,  what  do  they  idealise,  except  natural  exist- 
ence and  natural  passions  ?  That  would  be  a  mis- 
erable and  superfluous  ideal  indeed  that  was 
nobody's  ideal  of  nothing.  The  pertinence  of 
ideals  binds  them  to  nature,  and  it  is  only  the  worst 
and  flimsiest  ideals,  the  ideals  of  a  sick  soul,  that 
elude  nature's  limits  and  belie  her  potentialities. 
Ideals  are  forerunners  or  heralds  of  nature's  suc- 
cesses, not  always  followed,  indeed,  by  their  ful- 
filment, for  nature  is  but  nature  and  has  to  feel 
her  way;  but  they  are  an  earnest,  at  least,  of  an 
achieved  organisation,  an  incipient  accomplish- 
ment, that  tends  to  maintain  and  root  itself  in  the 
world. 

To  speak  of  nature's  successes  is,  of  course,  to 


FLUX   AND   CONSTANCY  283 

impute  success  retroactively;  but  the  expression 
may  be  allowed  when  we  consider  that  the  same 
functional  equilibrium  which  is  looked  back  upon 
as  a  good  by  the  soul  it  serves,  first  creates  in- 
dividual being  and  with  it  creates  the  possibility 
of  preference  and  the  whole  moral  world;  and  it 
is  more  than  a  metaphor  to  call  that  achievement 
a  success  which  has  made  a  sense  of  success  pos- 
sible and  actual.  That  nature  cannot  intend  or 
previously  esteem  those  formations  which  are  the 
condition  of  value  or  intention  existing  at  all,  is 
a  truth  too  obvious  to  demand  repetition;  but 
when  those  formations  arise  they  determine  esti- 
mation, and  fix  the  direction  of  preference,  so  that 
the  evolution  which  produced  them,  when  looked 
back  upon  from  the  vantage-ground  thus  gained, 
cannot  help  seeming  to  have  been  directed  toward 
the  good  now  distinguished  and  partly  attained. 
For  this  reason  creation  is  regarded  as  a  work  of 
love,  and  the  power  that  brought  order  out  of 
chaos  is  called  intelligence. 

Living  These  natural   formations,   tending 

stabiuty.  to  generate  and  realise  each  its  ideal, 
are,  as  it  were,  eddies  in  the  universal  flux,  pro- 
duced no  less  mechanically,  doubtless,  than  the 
onward  current,  yet  seeming  to  arrest  or  to  reverse 
it.  Inheritance  arrests  the  flux  by  repeating  a 
series  of  phases  with  a  recognisable  rhythm; 
memory  reverses  it  by  modifying  this  rhythm  itself 
by  the  integration  of  earlier  phases  into  those  that 
supervene.     Inheritance  and  memory  make  human 


284  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

stability.  This  stability  is  relative,  being  still  a 
mode  of  flux,  and  consists  fundamentally  in  repe- 
tition. Repetition  marks  some  progress  on  mere 
continuity,  since  it  preserves  form  and  disregards 
time  and  matter.  Inheritance  is  repetition  on  a 
larger  scale,  not  excluding  spontaneous  variations ; 
while  habit  and  memory  are  a  sort  of  heredity 
within  the  individual,  since  here  an  old  percep- 
tion reappears,  by  way  of  atavism,  in  the  midst  of 
a  forward  march.  Life  is  thus  enriched  and  re- 
action adapted  to  a  wider  field ;  much  as  a  note  is 
enriched  by  its  overtones,  and  by  the  tensions,  in- 
herited from  the  preceding  notes,  which  give  it  a 
new  setting. 

.  Progress,    far    from    consisting    in 

necessary  to  phaugc,  depends  on  retentiveness. 
progress.  When    change    is    absolute    there    re- 

mains no  being  to  improve  and  no  direction 
is  set  for  possible  improvement:  and  when  ex- 
perience is  not  retained,  as  among  savages, 
infancy  is  perpetual.  Those  who  cannot  rernem- 
ber  the  past  are  condemned  to  repeat  it.  In 
the  first  stage  ot  iile  tne  mind  is  ffivolou's  and 
easily  distracted;  it  misses  progress  by  failing  in 
consecutiveness  and  persistence.  This  is  the  con- 
dition of  children  and  barbarians,  in  whom  in- 
stinct has  learned  nothing  from  experience.  In  a 
second  stage  men  are  docile  to  events,  plastic  to 
new  habits  and  suggestions,  yet  able  to  graft  them 
on  original  instincts,  which  they  thus  bring  to 
fuller  satisfaction.     This  is  the  plane  of  manhood 


FLUX    AND    CONSTANCY  285 

and  true  progress.  Last  comes  a  stage  when  re- 
tentiveness  is  exhausted  and  all  that  happens  is 
at  once  forgotten;  a  vain,  because  unpractical, 
repetition  of  the  past  takes  the  place  of  plasticity 
and  fertile  readaptation.  In  a  moving  world  re- 
adaptation  is  the  price  of  longevity.  The  hard 
shell,  far  from  protecting  the  vital  principle,  con- 
demns it  to  die  down  slowly  and  be  gradually 
chilled ;  immortality  in  such  a  case  must  have  been 
secured  earlier,  by  giving  birth  to  a  generation 
plastic  to  the  contemporary  world  and  able  to  re- 
tain its  lessons.  Thus  old  age  is  as  forgetful  as 
youth,  and  more  incorrigible;  it  displays  the  same 
inattentiveness  to  conditions;  its  memory  becomes 
self-repeating  and  degenerates  into  an  instinctive 
reaction,  like  a  bird's  chirp. 
Limits  of  Not   all    readaptation,    however,    is 

vanation.  progress,  for  ideal  identity  must  not 
heritage.  be  lost.  The  Latin  language  did  not 
progress  when  it  passed  into  Italian.  It  died. 
Its  amiable  heirs  may  console  us  for  its  depart- 
ure, but  do  not  remove  the  fact  that  their  parent 
is  extinct.  So  every  individual,  nation,  and  re- 
ligion has  its  limit  of  adaptation;  so  long  as  the 
increment  it  receives  is  digestible,  so  long  as  the 
organisation  already  attained  is  extended  and  elab- 
orated without  being  surrendered,  growth  goes  on ; 
but  when  the  foundation  itself  shifts,  when  what 
is  gained  at  the  periphery  is  lost  at  the  centre,  the 
flux  appears  again  and  progress  is  not  real.  Thus 
a  succession  of  generations  or  languages  or  relig- 


286  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

ions  constitutes  no  progress  unless  some  ideal  pres- 
ent at  the  beginning  is  transmitted  to  the  end  and 
reaches  a  better  expression  there ;  without  this  sta- 
bility at  the  core  no  common  standard  exists  and 
all  comparison  of  value  with  value  must  be  exter- 
nal and  arbitrary.  Ketentiveness,  we  must  repeat, 
is  the  condition  of  progress. 

The  variation  human  nature  is  open  to  is  not, 
then,  variation  in  any  direction.  There  are  trans- 
formations that  would  destroy  it.  So  long  as  it 
endures  it  must  retain  all  that  constitutes  it  now, 
all  that  it  has  so  far  gathered  and  worked  into  its 
substance.  The  genealogy  of  progress  is  like  that 
of  man,  who  can  never  repudiate  a  single  ancestor. 
It  starts,  so  to  speak,  from  a  single  point,  free  as 
yet  to  take  any  direction.  When  once,  however, 
evolution  has  taken  a  single  step,  say  in  the  direc- 
tion of  vertebrates,  that  step  cannot  be  retraced 
without  extinction  of  the  species.  Such  extinc- 
tion may  take  place  while  progress  in  other  lines 
is  continued.  All  that  preceded  the  forking  of 
the  dead  and  the  living  branch  will  be  as  well  rep- 
resented and  as  legitimately  continued  by  the  sur- 
viving radiates  as  it  could  have  been  by  the  ver- 
tebrates that  are  no  more;  but  the  vertebrate 
ideal  is  lost  for  ever,  and  no  more  progress  is  pos- 
sible along  that  line. 

Perfectibility.  The  future  of  moral  evolution  is 
accordingly  infinite,  but  its  character  is  more  and 
more  determinate  at  every  step.  Mankind  can 
never,   without   perishing,   surrender    its   animal 


FLUX   AND    CONSTANCY  287 

nature,  its  need  to  eat  and  drink,  its  sexual  method 
of  reproduction,  its  vision  of  nature,  its  faculty  of 
speech,  its  arts  of  music,  poetry,  and  building. 
Particular  races  cannot  subsist  if  they  renounce 
their  savage  instincts,  but  die,  like  wild  animals, 
in  captivity;  and  particular  individuals  die  when 
not  suffered  any  longer  to  retain  their  memories, 
their  bodies,  or  even  their  master  passions.  Thus 
human  nature  survives  amid  a  continual  fluctua- 
tion of  its  embodiments.  At  every  step  twigs  and 
leaves  are  thrown  out  that  last  but  one  season ;  but 
the  underlying  stem  may  have  meantime  grown 
stronger  and  more  luxuriant.  Whole  branches 
sometimes  wither,  but  others  may  continue  to 
bloom.  Spiritual  unity  runs,  like  sap,  from  the 
common  root  to  every  uttermost  flower;  but  at 
each  forking  in  the  growth  the  branches  part  com- 
pany, and  what  happens  in  one  is  no  direct  con- 
cern of  the  others.  The  products  of  one  age  and 
nation  may  well  be  unintelligible  to  another;  the 
elements  of  humanity  common  to  both  may  lie 
lower  down.  So  that  the  highest  things  are  com- 
municable to  the  fewest  persons,  and  yet,  among 
these  few,  are  the  most  perfectly  communicable. 
The  more  elaborate  and  determinate  a  man's  heri- 
tage and  genius  are,  the  more  he  has  in  common 
with  his  next  of  kin,  and  the  more  he  can  transmit 
and  implant  in  his  posterity  for  ever.  Civilisation 
is  cumulative.  The  farther  it  goes  the  intenser  it 
is,  substituting  articulate  interests  for  animal 
fumes  and  for  enigmatic  passions.     Such  articu- 


288  THE    LIFE    OF    REASON 

late  interests  can  be  shared ;  and  the  infinite  vistas 
they  open  up  can  be  pursued  for  ever  with  the 
knowledge  that  a  work  long  ago  begun  is  being 
perfected  and  that  an  ideal  is  being  embodied 
which  need  never  be  outworn. 

So  long  as  external  conditions  re- 
Ratureand       main  constaut  it  is  obvious  that  the 

human  nature. 

greater  organisation  a  being  possesses 
the  greater  strength  he  will  have.  If  indeed  pri- 
mary conditions  varied,  the  finer  creatures  would 
die  first;  for  their  adaptation  is  more  exquisite 
and  the  irreversible  core  of  their  being  much 
larger  relatively;  but  in  a  constant  environment 
their  equipment  makes  them  irresistible  and 
secures  their  permanence  and  multiplication.  Now 
man  is  a  part  of  nature  and  her  organisation  may 
be  regarded  as  the  foundation  of  his  own :  the  word 
nature  is  therefore  less  equivocal  than  it  seems,  for 
every  nature  is  Nature  herself  in  one  of  her  more 
specific  and  better  articulated  forms.  Man  there- 
fore represents  the  universe  that  sustains  him;  his 
existence  is  a  proof  that  the  cosmic  equilibriiim 
that  fostered  his  life  is  a  natural  equilibrium, 
capable  of  being  long  maintained.  Some  of  the 
ancients  thought  it  eternal;  physics  now  suggests 
a  different  opinion.  But  even  if  this  equilibrium, 
by  which  the  stars  are  kept  in  their  courses  and 
human  progress  is  allowed  to  proceed,  is  funda- 
mentally unstable,  it  shows  what  relative  stability 
nature  may  attain.  Could  this  balance  be  pre- 
served indefinitely,  no  one  knows  what  wonderful 


FLUX    AND    CONSTANCY  289 

adaptations  might  occur  within  it,  and  to  what  ex- 
cellence human  nature  in  particular  might  arrive. 
Nor  is  it  unlikely  that  before  the  cataclysm  comes 
time  will  be  afforded  for  more  improvement  than 
moral  philosophy  has  ever  dreamed  of.  For  it  is 
remarkable  how  inane  and  unimaginative  Utopias 
have  generally  b^en.  This  possibility  is  not  un- 
inspiring and  may  help  to  console  those  who  think 
the  natural  conditions  of  life  are  not  conditions 
that  a  good  life  can  be  lived  in.  The  possibility 
of  essential  progress  is  bound  up  with  the  tragic 
possibility  that  progress  and  human  life  should 
some  day  end  together.  If  the  present  equilibrium 
of  forces  were  eternal  all  adaptations  to  it  would 
have  already  taken  place  and,  while  no  essential 
catastrophe  would  need  to  be  dreaded,  no  essential 
improvement  could  be  hoped  for  in  all  eternity. 
I  am  not  sure  that  a  humanity  such  as  we  know, 
were  it  destined  to  exist  for  ever,  would  offer  a 
more  exhilarating  prospect  than  a  humanity  hav- 
ing indefinite  elasticity  together  with  a  precarious 
tenure  of  life.  Mortality  has  its  compensations: 
one  is  that  all  evils  are  transitory,  another  that 
better  times  may  come. 

Human  nature,  then,  has  for  its  core 
Human  nature  ^|^g  gubstancc  of  nature  at  large,  and 

formulated.  ° 

is  one  of  its  more  complex  formations. 
Its  determination  is  progressive.  It  varies  indefi- 
nitely in  its  historic  manifestations  and  fades  into 
what,  as  a  matter  of  natural  history,  might  no 
longer  be  termed  human.  At  each  moment  it  has 
Vou  L~19 


290  THE    LIFE    OF    KEASON 

its  fixed  and  determinate  entelechy,  the  ideal  of 
that  being's  life,  based  on  his  instincts,  summed 
up  in  his  character,  brought  to  a  focus  in  his  re- 
flection, and  shared  by  all  who  have  attained  or 
may  inherit  his  organisation.  His  perceptive  and 
reasoning  faculties  are  parts  of  human  nature,  as 
embodied  in  him;  all  objects  of  belief  or  desire, 
with  all  standards  of  justice  and  duty  which  he 
can  possibly  acknowledge,  are  transcripts  of  it, 
conditioned  by  it,  and  justifiable  only  as  expres- 
sions of  its  inherent  tendencies. 

This  definition  of  human  nature,  clear  as  it  may 
be  in  itself  and  true  to  the  facts,  will  perhaps 
hardly  make  sufficiently  plain  how  the  Life  of 
Reason,  having  a  natural  basis,  has  in  the  ideal 
world  a  creative  and  absolute  authority.  A  more 
Its  concrete  concrete  description  of  human  nature 
descnption       ^^    accordingly  not  come  amiss,  espe- 

reserved  for  •'  °  ''  ^       r 

the  sequel.  cially  as  the  important  practical  ques- 
tion touching  the  extension  of  a  given  moral 
authority  over  times  and  places  depends  on  the 
degree  of  kinship  found  among  the  creatures  in- 
habiting those  regions.  To  give  a  general  picture 
of  human  nature  and  its  rational  functions  will 
be  the  task  of  the  following  books.  The  truth  of 
a  description  which  must  be  largely  historical  may 
not  be  indifferent  to  the  reader,  and  I  shall  study 
to  avoid  bias  in  the  presentation,  in  so  far  as 
is  compatible  with  frankness  and  brevity;  yet 
even  if  some  bias  should  manifest  itself  and  if  the 
picture  were  historically  false,  the  rational  prin- 


FLUX    AND    CONSTANCY  291 

ciples  we  shall  be  trying  to  illustrate  will  not 
thereby  be  invalidated.  Illustrations  might  have 
been  sought  in  some  fictitious  world,  if  imagina- 
tion had  not  seemed  so  much  less  interesting  than 
reality,  which  besides  enforces  with  unapproach- 
able eloquence  the  main  principle  in  view,  namely, 
that  nature  carries  its  ideal  with  it  and  that  the 
progressive  organisation  of  irrational  impulses 
makes  a  rational  life. 


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